Well, not quite now! .. But following that competition everyone voted for us in, I’ve found out that we’ve actually managed to get the top number of votes and therefore won the competition to go to Tuscany. That’s great news, but I don’t know the details, so not quite sure when we’re going. With twins on the way, we’ll either go sometime soon, or maybe leave it for next year. After all, Arthur’s only three and not sure if he can handle the twins on his own .. now when he’s four ….

Seriously though, I’m really chuffed that we won the competition, and shout outs go out to all the guys down at FuelMyBlog and LastMinute.com for putting the competition together. And of course, thanks to everyone who voted for us!

Tuscany … here we come!

All you have to do is click on the picture to go to the competition website, find our photo and give us your vote. Easy peasy .. so go on, what are you waiting for?

(The competition is only running for a few days, till Sunday 12th, so please tell everyone you know to pop by and give us a vote)

p.s. If clicking on the photo doesn’t take your the Gallery to vote, just go to the bottom of the page and click “Gallery”. You’ll have to find our photo (seen above) in the Gallery and vote for us! We’re not that hard to find!

The prizes are being put up by Ten Bills, a website that retails T-Shirts at a flat $10. The T-shirts all seems to have cool imagery, but if I had to pick my favourite I would go with “Push My Buttons“, a brilliant design by Budi Satria Kwan. The T-shirts are all very artisticly themed, and I’m sure will appeal to some of you out there, so don’t hesitate to enter the contest too; it’s free, it’s fun and you don’t need to be wearing any safety equipment to do it.

It’s actually quite nice to see something like this that isn’t restricted to a small part of the Internet. I do appreciate that sometimes there’s legislation that prevents things like this to happen internationally and there is a cost differential of allowing foreign competitors to enter, but I’d like to see barriers like this disappear over time, and companies and individuals tackling initiatives on a global scale; not just something they want to do in their own back yard.

Great work Drew!

So, here are some interesting stats about the competition. People could sign up in one of 2 ways, via a tweet, or a post and comment on the blog. Over the span of the competition (4 days) I got a total of:

• 125 entries on Twitter (each with a link back to my competition page)
• 91 new followers on Twitter (though I can’t vouch they are all due to the competition)
• 11 blog posts entries (each with a link back to my competition page)
• 66 comments on the post
• 4 trackbacks on the post

I thought that was pretty good considering I ran the competition during a quiet period and the prize cost me less than $20. I think I’ll do it again in the future, but have a bigger prize (or maybe more than one prize). So, if you want to know about it, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my RSS feed.

So, what prizes would you like to see?

The contest is open to anyone, all over the globe, available to anywhere that Zazzle can ship the mug too. Obviously it would help if you had a Twitter account as that’s how the list of friends on the mug is built up. But if you don’t have a Twitter account, just find someone who has and I’ll send you a mug of THEIR friends (if you are so inclined). It’s always better to use your own friends though, that is, if you have any

How to enter

There are two ways you can enter this competition. You can write a blog post about it or your can Tweet about it. You can enter with both these if you want to increase your chances of winning. The competition starts now and closes on the 31st December 2008 at 23:59 GMT.

1. Blog Post: In order to get an entry into the competition, simply write a blog post about it and leave a comment on this post to let me know about your post. If you have multiple blogs you can enter multiple times (up to 5 times).
2. Tweet: To enter the competition, simply follow me. Then all you have to do is Tweet the following: RT @OwenC is giving away a Twitter Mug for New Year. Enter here: http://tinyurl.com/winatwittermug You can enter the contest as many times as you like, but if you don’t leave a 4 hour gap between tweets, they will be considered invalid.

That’s all! The contest winner will be picked at random just after the New Year is ushered in here in the UK. I’ll be needing your Twitter name (if I don’t already know it) and your address to ship the mug to, so if you can be online that would help, but you don’t have to be. This is my first competition, so I’m looking forward to running it. Good luck everyone!

photo credit: .klash

If you’ve been following my posts over the last few weeks you’d have noticed that I was taking part in a competition organised by PicApp and FuelMyBlog. Well, the competition is now over and the winner has been announced.

The winner was BenSpark who’s off to Blog World Expo in Vegas next month. Congratulations mate!

I got a notable mention together with www.acelebrationofcurves.com; www.greasyguide.com; www.pieknyibogaty.blogspot.com.

It was a fun competition and I always love the spirit of camaraderie that these online contests bring about. I made the mistake of getting emotionally drawn into this one though. Didn’t realise until I found out how gutted I was when I didn’t win. Maybe I should have realised earlier and put more effort into winning. Andrew certainly went all out on his blog Google is not God. Still, it was a valiant effort and I was glad I took part in the competition.

Way to go FuelMyBlog and PicApp. When are you holding another one?

Ah well, time is running out for the FuelMyBlog PicApp competition, with a ticket with accommodation and travel to Blog World Expo as the prize. I don’t know if I have managed to made the grade; I do know that my friend BenSpark has made a concerted effort to win, but I think I have made a valiant effort too; so we’ll have to see who managed to make the grade.

Good luck everyone. We’ll find out who wins next week.

Well, today is the last day of the PicApp competition organised together with FuelMyBlog. I’ve done my best, so it’s really up to the powers that be. I hope you, my readers have enjoyed having the PicApp pictures as part of my posts. It’s been an interesting experience and I’ve been impressed with two things about PicApp:

• The sheer volume of photos: There are photos about everything you can imagine. And I love the way there are always updated with the latest events. If you search for the Olympics for example, you get all the recent photos from the events
• The interactivity of the photos: I like the way the photos automatically get a description together with tools to share the photo with your friends etc. This is done automatically for you, as is the resizing and styling options you need to insert the picture into you blog post.

All in all, regardless of how I do in their comptition, I wish PicApp the best of luck. Great concept guys!

Work Connexions is offering $200 dollars for your best blog post. All you have to do is to go to www.workconnexions.com and submit your best blog post before 30th June 2008 and you will be automatically entered into the competition. Include a link from your website and you will qualify for one month banner advertising on any of our Wcx page rank 4 and above sites.

Enter at: http://www.workconnexions.com

We might do something totally different this year, and the further away from that picture I can think of might be the rowdy city of Las Vegas. I was looking around for more information and came across the Trusted Tours & Attractions website, a company who does sightseeing tours in the area. The page that got my attention was the “Things to do in Las Vegas” page, where I came across a tour of the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam which I wouldn’t mind taking. The website also has some great photos and videos of the area.

One last thing about the website, if you sign up for their newsletter they are currently running a competition where you can win a Handheld GPS. But hurry, the competition ends on the 30th April, so get your entries in!