Latest Gear Live Videos
Contest: Win a custom Gear Live iPhone, LRG cases, and Monster Cable Accessories!
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Announcements, Apple, Smartphones, Features,
Since our last giveaway contest went so well (and the HDX Dragon computer is on its way to our winner!), we thought you guys might be interested in yet another opportunity to win some cool stuff from Gear Live. That’s why we are giving away a one-of-a-kind customized iPhone, along with a bunch of accessories from LRG and Monster Cable. Even better? This time, we will have three winners.
What makes our iPhone so special? Well, we’ve had it customized and done up in Gear Live colors. Heck, we even put our logo on it, so you can rock the fact that you are a fan of what we do here. Also, we will unlock it for you, if you like, prior to sending it over. We are gonna make this one easy too. The contest starts today, and will end on July 2, 2008. Between now and then, we are gonna be monitoring comments left throughout Gear Live, and forum posts. If you are a regular participants in those areas, you will have an opportunity to win. On July 3, we will compile a list of members who have been active during the contest period, and we will then choose our first, second, and third place winners randomly. Here are the full details on the three packages:
Grand Prize:
- Customized orange Gear Live iPhone
- 3 LRG | Monster iPhone cases of your choosing
- LRG Tee Shirt
- iCableLink iPhone headphone jack adapter
- iSoniTalk iPhone microphone
Second Place:
- 2 LRG | Monster iPhone cases of your choosing
- LRG Tee Shirt
- iCableLink iPhone headphone jack adapter
- iSoniTalk iPhone microphone
Third Place:
- 1 LRG | Monster iPhone cases of your choosing
- LRG Tee Shirt
- iCableLink iPhone headphone jack adapter
- iSoniTalk iPhone microphone
Oh, and just to be clear, if you spam, you are eliminated from the contest. We are looking for people who genuinely add to the conversation across our network in blog comment posts, and on the Gear Live Forums. That means you have to be a member of the site to win, so if you aren’t already, go ahead and sign up. One last thing, we can only award the prize to a resident of the USA. If you plan on winning and you don’t live here, you’d better have a cousin or great aunt with an address in the US that we can ship your package to.
A big thank you to LRG and Monster Cable for helping us out with this contest.
Advertisement
Announcing the winner of our HP HDX Dragon computer package…
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Announcements, Movies, PC / Laptop, Video Games,
Alright, we’ve hyped it for over a month - the 31 Days of the Dragon contest was our second biggest giveaway in the history of Gear Live. The rules were simple - interact with Gear Live and our community, and don’t spam. You earn points for different actions you take on the site, and the person with the most points at the end of the contest would be declared the winner, as long as they didn’t resort to spamming to get there.
We saw a lot of new activity across the board. Comments, forum posts, gallery comments, new members, and the list goes on…but there could only be one winner. Do note, if you didn’t win, we have another contest starting next week where we will be giving away our customized Gear Live iPhone as the grand prize, with a couple of runner up prizes as well.
Okay, we’ve waiting long enough. The winner of the HP HDX Dragon computer package is…
Click to continue reading Announcing the winner of our HP HDX Dragon computer package…
31 Days of the Dragon: Win our HP HDX Dragon computer package - The Rules
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories:
Yesterday, we kicked off our week-long contest, where we are giving away an HP HDX Dragon computer package, worth over $5,000 if you were to purchase each piece on your own. First, the details on what exactly we are giving away:
- HP HDX Dragon Notebook: This system ships with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate, and features a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor., 4GB RAM, 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS, 500GB hard drive, and boasts a 20.1-inch 1080p display. It’s meant to be for play as much as work, and to that end, it also packs a Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD double layer burner, integrated TV tuner, webcam and microphone. If you went and bought this yourself, it would cost $4,500 USD. But we’re not done yet…
- Microsoft Office Professional 2007: That means Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, and Accounting Express, all in one package. Retail value on that is $225.
- Corel PaintShop Pro X2: Retail value of $73.99
- Corel Painter Essentials Retail value of $79.99
- Corel Ulead Video Studio Plus 11.5 Retail value of $79.95
- Gears of War: retail value of $49.99
- Viva Pinata: Retail value of $37.99
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Retail value of $44.99
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X Expansion Pack: Retail value of $34.99
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Blu-ray: Retail value of $22.95
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest - Blu-ray: Retail value of $22.95
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End - Blu-ray: Retail value of $22.95
Okay, interested? We thought so. If you want to see everything in more detail, check out our HDX Giveaway contest videos. These will give you more insight as to how the contest is going to work, a look at all of the prizes that are being given away, and a detailed unboxing of the Dragon notebook.
We will be using Gear Live Points to determine a winner. However, we have custom Point values set for this contest. Points earned for this contest are as follows:
Click to continue reading 31 Days of the Dragon: Win our HP HDX Dragon computer package - The Rules
We’ve been working on a way to recognize you readers who participate here on our network of sites at Gear Live, and we are happy to announce the launch of Gear Live Points. In a nutshell, Points are awarded to users whenever they take any sort of interactive action on Gear Live. We think it’s a fun way to spice up your daily visits to the site.
You earn points for all the following actions:
- Becoming a member: 100 points
- Upload a member photo: 50 points
- Choose or upload an avatar: 25 points
- Posting a blog comment: 1 point
- Posting a gallery comment: 1 point
- Assign a forum signature: 10 points
- Posting a forum topic: 2 points
- Posting a forum reply: 1 point
- Receiving a forum reply: 1 point
- Vote in a poll: 3 points
You must be logged in to earn points, and you can see the total amount of points you’ve earned right at the top of all pages. We are coming up with some cool things you will be able to do with your points, so stay tuned for that.
To kick off the launch of Gear Live Points, we are running a contest - our HP HDX Dragon giveaway. Good luck to all participants!
NOTE: Those found abusing Gear Live Points (like posting excessive comments/forum posts that don’t say anything or contribute to the conversation) will suffer a loss of points. This policy is at Gear Live’s sole discretion.
Today we have started a contest giving away an HP HDX Dragon computer package, which would be worth over $5,200 if you were to purchase it on your own, and we want to make sure you know about it. This is all part of the 31 Days of the Dragon promotion that we are a part of. We have a couple of videos that you should check out - one shows off the HDX Dragon computer, and the other gives some insight into the contest itself. We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how exactly people enter and rack up points to win, and that post will be coming later today. In the meantime, jump down to check out the videos for the scoop.
HP HDX Giveaway contest announcement:
Blog Business Summit: 10 Ways To A Killer Blog
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Blogging, Features, Marketing, Planning,
Robert and Maryam are speaking on getting noticed in the new word-of-mouth network.
1) Blog because you want to. A story without live is not worth telling. Maryam talks about how Robert kept pushing her to blog for four years. Then one day, she started to blog. As soon as she started, she was blogging about Robert and he tried to get her to stop talking about him on her blog.
If you are blogging about something you don’t really care about because you think it’s profitable, you won’t have passion to go long-term.
2) Read other blogs. Use Technorati to find blogs that are similar to the topics you want to discuss, pick up writing styles, and learn about your competitors. If you read 50 blogs in two weeks and you aren’t compelled to answer back the things that you are reading, you probably won’t be a good blogger.
Maryam started blogging because she was going to a lot of conferences, but people told her they had no way of linking to her. It brings out community and a bond that she hadn’t experienced before. Through blogging she has gotten a much better job and has made a lot more friends. She loves it.
3) Pick a niche you can own - be different. There are two kinds of bloggers - ones that want to make things, and shake things. Others just want to talk to their friends and use their blogs to post baby pictures, talk about books they read, etc. Either way, each group should have a common set of values. When Robert visited people outside of Silicon Valley, he studied the way people use their computers. People go to Google and search for Yahoo because they want to get to Yahoo. Same for Yahoo, one of their top terms is Google.
Normal people outside the tech world aren’t using things like Google Maps, Google Groups, or Picasa. Everyone comes at this world through the search engine, so how do they interact with that?
Question - if you were to pick a category to be different in, would that be the tech category? Yes, it would be hard, but Mike Arrington came in late to the game and went to number one. He was also very focused on a very specific part of the tech industry, being Web 2.0.
There was a niche blogger in London who talks about the London Underground transportation system. After the London bombing, everyone hit her site, and now she is popular. Of course, we don’t want to have a terrorist act happen to make us famous, but you get the point.
Click to continue reading Blog Business Summit: 10 Ways To A Killer Blog
Blog Business Summit: Jason Calacanis Keynote - From Weblogs, Inc. to Netscape
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Blogging, Features, Marketing,
9:07: Jason hits the stage and says you don’t have to have the gin tasting the night before the conference instead of the night after.
9:08: Blogging is a great way to build a business, and it’s a business in and of itself. back in 1994, people thought the web was the place to get text, and then thought it was a magazine, then maybe the future of TV. However, you can do a lot of different things with it. Same with blogs - they are like paper. You can make a marketing brochure, a beautiful book, or toilet paper.
9:10: Blogs are real and authentic. There is a movie called “Homepage” which Jason recommends to the attendees. No one knows who Justin Hall is, which blows him away. In 2002-2003 there was a lot of mistrust overall. This is where blogs became free, and started gaining traction. People wanted to express themselves, and that created the perfect storm for blogging. Enter Weblogs, Inc.
9:12: Rafat Ali over at www.paidcontent.org earns about $70,000 from blogging, twice what he was earning working for Jason at Silicon Alley Reporter. Jason started to see the power in the medium. Xeni Jardin flourished after working for Jason, which is when he started wondering if he was holding people back rather than letting them loose. The proof was that when they left, they did better and more interesting work.
9:15: When Silicon Alley Reporter was over, Jason and his CTO Brian Alvey started talking about blogging. They started building blogs in the fall of 2003, and Jason’s idea was that they make is similar to About.com with a bunch of mini-portals.
Blog Business Summit: What’s Next In Online Communication?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Blogging, Design, Features, Marketing, Planning,
Jeremy Pepper, Jeanette Gibson, and John Starweather
How does Cisco manage relationships with End Users when there is a reseller middle man?
By providing them a unique way to interact with the company online. They can log in and get a personalized view, along with interactivity.
Can they talk about steps they are taking to educate employees internally about the potential for engagement, so that they understand the impact of blogs, podcasting, etc.?
To educate, you need to have some good data so that you can show how influence really moves across the Internet, and how something you might post online actually reaches customers and hits the community. Cisco puts a blog, podcasting, and news section on their Intranet system, so global employees can all get to that information easily.
Click to continue reading Blog Business Summit: What’s Next In Online Communication?
Blog Business Summit: Setting Up TypePad
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Blogging, Business Tools, Features, Software,
11:30: TypePad is a hosted blogging service that gives you a 30-day free trial. Keywords are very important. What words do people use when they try to find your product or service? This aids in choosing a TypePad subdomain for your blog address.
11:35: Dave takes everything through the basic TypePad setup process. Filling in fields, choosing a domain, Terms of Service, etc.
11:38: Question - Are you giving traffic to Six Apart rather than to yourself when going with a hosted blogging service? The blog should be subset of your domain. You can redirect your domain from TypePad through their interface, forwarding your TypePad blog to your personal site.
11:43: Focusing on title of the blog - again, focus on keywords here. Then moves to choosing a TypePad layout template. The further down content is on a page, the less relevant to Google. As for sidebar, 2 column right is much better than 2 column left as far as ranking.
11:49: Password-protected blogs are an option, which is great for private communication or corporate blogs.
11:56: Dave goes on to show the TypePad interface and posts a blog post right from the stage.
Live-Blogging Blog Business Summit: Dave Taylor Keynote, The Future of Findability
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Blogging, Business Tools, Features, Marketing,
We are here at the 2006 Blog Business Summit in Seattle. Dave Taylor just took the stage to give his keynote.
9:00 AM: Dave begins by asking how many people updated their website in the past seven days. Of course, many of them have, since this is the Blog Business Summit. However, maybe 5% of site owners update at least weekly.
9:03: Google aims to provide good, fresh content. Same with all search engines. Since most info on the web is out of date, this is the dilemma of the search engines.
9:04: What is findability? When customers try to find your product or service, can they find it? This is what is critically important to your business - especially if they find your competitor instead of you. Every time someone finds someone else, they aren’t finding you.
9:05: No one really understands what the best practices of blogging really are - they are case by case. If you can’t be found, you’re already dead. If I ask my cellphone for the closest Chinese restaurant, and the Chinese restaurant across the street doesn’t show up as a search result, they’re dead.
Recent Galleries
Advertisement
© Gear Live Media, LLC. 2007 – User-posted content, unless source is quoted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License. Gear Live graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, videos, articles, blogs, forums, scripts and other service names are the trademarks of Gear Live Inc.