Let’s do launch

Blogstakes is a unique new kind of sweepstakes with two winners for every prize: a person who entered and the site that referred the winning entry. So if the prize is a truck, then the winning entry gets a truck and the blog that sent them gets a truck too.

Blogstakes opens today with two contests.

One of them — Free BrowserCam for a Year — is a good match for people who design Web sites and the other — The Clip-n-Seal Fresh Party Pack — is a good match for people who eat.

There are more contests launching in the next few weeks. If you aren’t someone who builds Web sites or eats, sign up for the announcements mailing list or subscribe to an RSS feed and maybe I’ll have something that appeals to you in a future contest.

A snow day in the middle of summer

Everyone I work with is home from work today and many of them are still without electricity or running water. Since my electricity was on and my server in the city had not yet reappeared, I tinkered with some SQL code for my next version of Meet The Makers and I braved the shopping throng to replenish my Diet Coke supply.

You might not know this, but the word “throng” is a Middle English word from before the 12th century and — despite what you think — it is completely unrelated to the words “throb” and “thong.”

Powerless

Maybe you’ve heard a story like this one: I was in a chat session with co-workers in LA and NYC and I was knocked offline when the power died at my home office in White Plains. Before I could call anyone to explain my sudden disappearance, they called to tell me that their whole building in the city just lost power. Uh-oh.

Thankfully, my wife and son are safe in Florida this week. I mentioned that to my neighbor across the street and he suggested that while I was a bachelor again, I should “get a whore.”

Get a whore? That is so wrong.

Aren’t you supposed to refer to them as escorts or call girls? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s only number six on the list of things they like to be called.

No thanks, I’m just browsing

Today I tested the Blogstakes site in BrowserCam. Blogstakes looked great in every modern browser and failed spectacularly in a few older ones — but it looks way better in Linux browsers than I imagined it would. So I’ll be hiding styles from the older browsers.

This is one of two site designs that I’m working on and testing in BrowserCam this weekend and both are related to blogs or blogging. I think it was Black Sabbath that said it best in the early eighties: “Blog rules.”

One down, one to go…

Feedback on the first Blogstakes design from a trusted critic has led me in a new direction — one that is more structured like the kind of sites I usually build and way less goofy. Maybe someday — when I know you a little better — I’ll show you the crazy design that never saw the light of day.

The Clip-n-Seal templates are in. I really like the designer they use. He turned in a really clean page with a soft palette and tasteful illustrations. Only one more contest to prep before we go live.

Blogstakes prepares for launch

My first Blogstakes design is complete and I don’t really know where it came from. Most of my site designs are more corporate and function-driven, but this one is bright and playful.

We’ve got two great contests signed up already and we’re just waiting for their page templates to come in so we can go live. Then we’ll confirm the prizes and set deadlines for the contests.

Let there be Blogstakes!

A good friend of a good friend asked me for my ideas on how to promote his new product online. I took my time getting back to him since I didn’t really have an answer for him. When I finally did respond, I suggested a contest site that could be easily linked to by blogs and that he should give out prizes to people who signed up and the blogs that sent them.

He didn’t have any way to collect the contest data and I’ve been creating sweepstakes Web sites for clients since 1996, so I created Blogstakes.