As we prepare for our two month Etoys publicity drive (starting November 1st), I'd like to make things a little more interesting.

Let's have a contest.    The winner gets  a brand-new HobbyZone Super Cub LP with a lightweight Fly Cam One attachable video camera, shipped anywhere (that's legal) in the world.

I'm personally donating both.  The plane is very fun, and very easy to fly. Also, if you win, you'll be able to do this:

Here are the rules:

2. you must guess three tally totals as they will appear at midnight, New Year's Eve, as the Times Square ball drops in New York City.  

The tally totals are:

a. Squeakers (number of people that have signed the squeaker list)

b. Accounts (number of people that have signed up for a showcase account)

c. Projects (number of publicly visible projects on the Showcase)

see: http://squeakland.org/tally

3. Lowest score wins.  To determine it, subtract your guesses from the corresponding new year's value for each total, then add the absolute value of the each difference.

Example:

squeakers ... joe's guess (5000) ... new year's value (4500) ... abs diff (500)

accounts ... joe's guess (3000) ... new year's value (3500) ... abs diff (500)

projects ... joes guess (1000) ... new year's value (7000) ... abs diff (6000)

score = 7000  

4. These bonuses will apply:

a. subtract 500 from your score if you're the last publicly visible project in 2009

b. subtract 300 from your score if you're from the top NON-USA country in the list at new year's

b. subtract 200 from your score if you're at the PURPLE level at new year's

d. subtract 100 from your score if you're at the BLUE level at new year's

see: http://squeakland.org/showcase/ranking.jsp

5. Initial guesses need to be emailed to me before November 1st starts (midnight) in New York.

6. You'll be allowed three "mulligans" before December 1st where you can change any one of your guesses (one per mulligan).

7. Each mulligan will enact a 100 point penalty, which will be added to your final score.

8. Any obvious attempts at cheating will disqualify you.  (Adding Squeakers or accounts yourself, reposting duplicate projects, etc.)

9. Disputes will be decided by me.  I'll try to be as fair as possible, though I suspect some will see things differently.  My plane, my call.

10. The winner will hopefully agree to send some fly-by video of a "Squeak if you love Etoys" sign, that we'll send, which we'll later use on the Squeakland website.

Anyway, I hope this remains friendly and fun.   The trick, of course, is making good guesses.

A few hints . . . 

* we currently average about 300 web visitors a day, some new, some returning.  We've peaked at 6000 web visitors in a single day.

* the peak was because of a magazine article.   We *will* be seeking multiple magazine articles and other forms of publicity during this time.

* the addition of multiple languages on the website will greatly increase our possible audience

* we will have "tell a friend" functionality to allow for some social networking, including facebook, twitter, and blog buttons for individual projects

* schools will create multiple accounts, usually in one shot (I just now saw 14 accounts from the same school create accounts).

So ask yourself . . .

How many people do you think like Etoys in the world?

Have fun!

Tim