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…

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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

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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.

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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 Dragon Unboxing video:

HP HDX Giveaway contest announcement:

 

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You should all know by now that we are going to be giving away a sleek, slick, awesome HP HDX Dragon computer prize package as part of the 31 Days of the Dragon contest. It amounts to just about $5,200 worth of prizes if you were to go out and buy everything on your own. Pretty sick, right?

Well, we wanted to give you a look at exactly what you would be walking away with if you won. In this episode, we show off everything. The HDX Dragon computer, all the software, all the games, and all the Blu-ray movies. We run down the computer specs as well, and we clue you in on what we will be doing to pick a winner.

We will be posting more about the contest and our method for choosing a winner in a bit more detail tomorrow. It’s late, and I’ve been moving all day…but at the very least, we had to get this video up for you guys at midnight, because we know that some of you are hardcores. We couldn’t leave you hanging.

A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this contest, and this episode.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4
|Download| - MP3

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A quick and simple way to set up fast Time Machine backups on your Mac Pro, or more storage for all those Bleeding Edge episodes you’ve been downloading, is to add in more hard drives. Thankfully, Apple has made the upgrade path to accomplishing this super simple. In this episode, we show you the step-by-step process that is takes to install a new hard drive in your Mac Pro in under 5 minutes. All you need is a Mac Pro, a Philips screwdriver, and a SATA hard drive. Oh, and of course a few minutes of spare time. It really is that easy. Hit up the video for the proof, and let us know what you think.

A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this episode.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4
|Download| - MP3

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In this episode, we show you how to install and upgrade the RAM in your Apple MacBook Pro, in less than five minutes. In case you weren’t aware, the last couple generations of the notebook actually support up to 4GB of RAM. We are still trying to wrap our head around that number, because for a portable, that is insane. Even better, though, is the fact that this is such a cheap upgrade when you look at the very nice boost in performance it’ll net you in return. You can buy 2 2GB RAM chips for your MacBook Pro for just over $100 USD. Again, an easy way to get more performance out of your notebook at an inexpensive price.

Check out the video for the full tutorial. If you need to buy RAM for your MacBook Pro, hit up Crucial for a great deal.

A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this episode.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4
|Download| - MP3

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The HP Garage is recognized as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. We got the rare opportunity to get inside of the Garage (thanks to our sponsor HP) to bring you a look at an important piece of tech history. Be sure to also check out our HP Garage photo tour. We also have a bunch of images in our HP Garage photo gallery.

We give you a peek at the rich history behind HP - if you are into tech, this is definitely one to watch. We get the story of how two men took HP from your average startup, to what we see today.

A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4
|Download| - MP3

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At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal just don’t cut it for us.

During SXSW, we got the opportunity to get an early looks at ExpressionEngine 2.0. If you have a blog, or want to blog in the future, you need to watch this video to see what is coming soon from the crew over at EllisLab. Seriously, we can’t praise these guys enough for what they do. If you’ve never heard of the product and want to give it a shot, you can download the free Core version over at the ExpressionEngine website. If you go for the full version, you have access to all sorts of upgrades.

Of course, ExpressionEngine 2.0 isn’t available just yet, but something tells us we will be seeing it sooner rather than later.

A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

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Read More |

ExpressionEngine product page

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We hope you’ve all enjoyed our CES 2008 video coverage. We’ve gone through our hours of footage, and picked out some of the best bloopers that our staff experienced. We know how disappointed you all probably are to realize that we aren’t perfect, but we think you should have gathered that from the Gear Live documentary.

Anyhow, have at it. We look forward to making fools out of ourselves again come CES 2009. Oh, and next year we will have to try and beat “hot dog guy” in the category of overall buffoonery. You’ll have to watch the video to see what we mean.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4
|Download| - MP3

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