Some of you may recall last summer, when we ran our first-ever Best Hint contest. Now that Leopard is upon us, we thought it'd be fun to roll it out again, taking into account some of the feedback from the first contest, and giving away more cool stuff.
The Mac OS X Hints Best Leopard Hints Contest
How it works: From Friday, October 26th through Friday, December 21st, any hint published here that is specific to OS X 10.5 (including its bundled applications) is eligible for this contest. Tips that are related to third-party applications will be considered eligible if the hint itself is specific to OS X 10.5. Keep in mind that to be published, a hint must pass some level of review -- it can't be a duplicate, it can't be for something obvious such as a menu shortcut, and to be eligible for the contest, it must be your original work (in other words, pointers to things you found on other sites may be published, but they will not be eligible for the contest.)
During the holiday break, I and the Macworld editors will narrow the field down to 20 finalists. On or around Wednesday, January 2nd, we'll open the voting on those 20 finalists to everyone. One of the complaints about the first contest was that the final winners were chosen solely by Macworld editors. This time, both the editors and you the readers will be voting, and we'll average the results to find the winners.
Voting will continue through Friday, January 11th, and winners will be announced on or around Monday, January 14th (we can't announce the winners until we've been in contact with them, so that may take a day or two). Coincidentally, that's the same week that Macworld Expo starts.
This being a contest with real prizes and all, we do have a set of official rules that I recommend you read if you want more details on how this will all work. For now, keep reading to find out what, exactly, you might be walking away with in mid-January...
The prizes: We're giving away a total of 10 prizes this time around, and we've stepped it up just a bit from the first go around. The grand prize winner for Best Leopard Hint will receive a shiny new 20" iMac of their very own! The runner up will get a 80GB iPod classic, third through fifth place will each receive a 4GB iPod nano, and sixth through tenth will get an iPod shuffle. Not too shabby for submitting a tip about an OS, eh?
Winners will be determined based on the combined score from you the readers and the Macworld editors. (The rules linked above have all sorts of explanations for what we'll do in the event of a tie.) The voting is open to anyone who wishes to vote, and we'll have some protections in place to prevent ballot box stuffing ("Gee, 2.75 million votes for hint #20, versus 540 for second place?").
Important stuff: Please submit your hints using our Submission page. I will not be able to accept hints that are emailed to me, as one of our potential tiebreakers is the time stamp on the story in the Mac OS X Hints queue. If you are not logged in when you submit your hint, you must include your email address in the body of the hint to be eligible for the contest! If I can't contact you, you cannot win, right? Don't worry, your address won't be published nor shared beyond what's necessary in the event you're one of the winners.
I think Leopard is going to drive a lot of hints, and I just know there are some hidden nuggets out there. So come the 26th, start hint hunting, and you might just walk away with a new iMac!
-rob.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071017225218624