Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Just a quick reminder that we're running a free phone give-away: there's an unlocked LG Quantum up for grabs. It's fast and easy to enter; all you need is a YouTube account. Check out this post for more details.

Just a quick reminder that the giveaway contest for a Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z is ending in roughly three hours - this all-in-one desktop computer worth $1308 USD is a fast, capable computer that would be perfect for a variety of scenarios and locations - check out my full review here. Enter the contest now!

I'm a couple days late getting this contest launched - things have been hectic - but here we go! I have a top-spec Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z to give away to one lucky Thoughts Media reader/YouTube viewer.

Here are the three things you have to do to be entered in this contest:

1. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
2. Post a comment on the YouTube contest video telling me how/where you'd use this computer. Don't post the comment here on Digital Home Thoughts though, only on the YouTube video.
3. Favorite the contest video on YouTube (instructions how are in the video)

That's it! One entry per person, and the contest closes at 5 PM GMT -7 on December 13th, 2010. Good luck everyone - the winner will be chosen randomly from amongst all the comments posted. The winner will be contacted via YouTube direct message, and will have 48 hours to respond back to me to claim their prize. If the winner hasn't fulfilled all three of the requirements above, I'll pick someone else.

Please note: due to shipping constraints, this contest is open to people in North America only. You guys know I always try to do world-wide contests, but this is a physically BIG prize so as you can imagine shipping world-wide would be a bit problematic.

Remember this contest is part of a much bigger contest with 20 other sites, so be sure to check out the other contests that are happening right now!

Hi everyone! I need your help to win an unboxing contest that Best Buy is running on Facebook, and it’s for a good cause. Since I do a lot of those, I thought hey, why not enter? There are two grand prizes of $2500 CAD each, awarded as Best Buy gift cards. Since we’re coming up on Christmas, sharing the grand prize if I win makes sense – so I’ve publicly committed to donating half of the prize ($1250) to kids involved with Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Canada. My mother works for that organization, and I’ve seen first hand the needs that some of these families have. She works with the in-school mentoring program, which pairs younger kids with senior citizen mentors. Apparently the kids are Nintendo Wii-crazy, and it’s an activity the seniors and kids can do together, so I think what I’ll do is buy as many Nintendo Wii bundles as I can with $1250 (it should be at least five of them).

I'd really appreciate the support of the Thoughts Media community, because - and I'll be blunt here - Twitter is such a noisy medium that every though yesterday the message about this contest went out to over 5000 people from three different people, nearly zero votes came as a result of it. I'm currently #3 in votes, but I could easily take a dominating lead if even 20% of you reading this decided to act. Please help!

Here’s how you can help me, and the kids, win – oh, and enter to win a $150 gift card yourself!

1. Log into Facebook, and visit the Best Buy Unboxing Day Contest Site. Click Allow when the app asks for your permission. I’ve noticed there’s a weird bug with Internet Explorer 8 where it loops the process for almost a minute, so you may want to use Firefox or Chrome if you run into trouble.
2. Find my Samsung Focus video (see above) and click on it, then click on Vote in the window that pops up. You’ll need to fill out a little form; if you live outside Canada and don't qualify for the gift card, just put in whatever bogus information you want.
3. Return to that contest site every day to vote – you can vote once every day up until December 31st.

The winners will be announced January 3rd, 2011, and if I win, I’ll announce it here and provide details and photos of the Wii’s I purchase.

(And for the Windows Phone Thoughts readers, I'll be doing a "real" unboxing of the Focus - that was just a simplified, quick version. I've got some serious concerns about the screen...).

Hey there Thoughts Media community! I was looking through an interesting discussion thread the other day, and I found myself realizing it was somewhat difficult to figure out who was saying what. Why? Because I'm a very visual person, and when I look at a discussion thread, I see avatars before I see the posting name. Back in the phpBB days, everyone had an avatar for their profile - but since we migrated to vBulletin a couple of years ago, it seems like adding an avatar to your profile is no longer the cool thing to do. Well, I say we make it cool again!

Here's all you have to do in order to be in the running to win a $50 gift card for Amazon.com: upload an avatar to your forum profile, and post a message as a response to this post telling me what you'd use the $50 gift card for. That's it - could you possibly imagine an easier contest? :-) If you don't want to upload a picture of yourself, there are many places to find avatars online (here, here, or here for starters). Keep them tasteful, respectful, and a maximum of 100 pixels by 100 pixels in size, and 19.5 KB or smaller. Non-animated GIFs and JPEGs are supported.

One comment per person, and I'll leave this contest open for a full week, closing it down on Thursday the 29th of July at 12pm GMT -7. Let's see those avatars!

I'm giving away a Lenovo A70z worth $729 USD, courtesy of Lenovo. It's a great all-in-one desktop computer that I did an unboxing and first impressions video of, and you can win it in a random drawing. You'll be winning a brand new A70z, still in the box, not the one I used in the video. I'll be selecting a random comment posted on this YouTube video telling me why this A70z is better than the computer you currently have, or how you'd use the A70z as a secondary computer. To win, that person has to be subscribed to my YouTube channel and has to have marked the video as a favourite. I forgot to mention that you should also Like the video, so that's not part of the official rules - but doing so would be the nice thing to do. :-)

The contest starts today, and runs until midnight on the 12th (GMT -7) - I'll be randomly selecting the winner on the morning of the 13th. One entry per person, and the winner must be located in the USA or Canada. Don't forget too that this is part of a much bigger giveaway ($15,000+) so be sure to check out all the of the other sites that are giving away their own A70z's. Good luck everyone!

This is a quick reminder that our giveaway of three pairs of SHURE SE210 headphones ends on the 15th of this month, so if you haven't already entered, you'd better do so quickly!

We've got another great contest for you, and this time because it's an accessory that works with so many different products, it's a network-wide contest. The prizes? I'm giving away three pairs of SHURE SE210 Earphones (MSRP $179.99 USD), courtesy of the generous folks at Shure. Our very own David Tucker reviewed this earphones back in September, and he loved them - so I'm sure the three winners will as well. The SE210's feature a noise-isolating sleeves that block 90 percent of the ambient noise, and the more noise you can block out, the more you can enjoy your tunes.

What do you have to do to win? Simply post a message in this discussion thread telling me which type of device (or devices) you'd use the headphones with. A Windows Mobile smartphone? A Zune? An iPod? An iPhone? A netbook or laptop? That's it - one post per person, and the contest closes on Tuesday the 15th of December at 12pm GMT -7. This contest is world-wide; I'll be shipping you the prizes myself.

Remember that all first posts in our system are held in moderation, so if this contest entry is your first post, please wait up to 48 hours before getting concerned if your post hasn't shown up yet - it will. Winners will be contacted via private forum message, so ensure that you have email notifications turned on. Winners will have 72 hours to claim their prize.

Let's see those entries!

UPDATE:The contest is now closed, and the three winners are GqSkrub, webguy248, and deenoo. Thanks to everyone for entering - it was great to see so many entries! And big thanks to SHURE for donating the prizes!

"You shouldn't have to stand in a long line to get a great deal. We're searching for the best Black Friday deals everywhere--including deals other stores are planning--so we can meet or beat their prices and bring them to you even earlier. These limited-supply offers will go quickly but we'll add new ones throughout the day, every day this week, so you can skip the long lines and still save a bundle."

Amazon.com has some great deals today (Fuji Finepix camera for $79 anyone?), so if you're going to do some online shopping at Amazon, do me a favour and use our affiliate link. It costs you nothing, but gives back a bit to the sites that you enjoy. Thanks! :-)

Hey everyone! This is a quick heads-up for you to check Digital Home Thoughts if you're interested in winning some free stuff. It's by far our #1 site when it comes to contests, largely because it covers a broad spectrum of topics which makes it easier to get giveaway items. We've been running a hard drive giveaway (3350 GB in total storage) for the past five weeks, giving away a variety of hard drives, and this week we're giving away a 500 GB Western Digital hard drive. Also going on is a giveaway for a Skooba Design Checkthrough Brief bag, and on Monday we're launching a contest giving away 10 copies of Corel Digital Studio 2010. Watch for it!

Remember the iZel review that I published a few weeks back? Well, the makers of the iZel have offered us three to give away to lucky Thoughts Media readers! This contest is open to anyone in the US or Canada (sorry rest-of-world). Entering the contest is really easy: all you have to do is post a message in this discussion thread telling me what kind of device(s) you'd want to use with the iZel. That's it! I'll randomly select three entries and each person will win an iZel. Nice and easy! The contest is open until the 16th of July, at 12pm (GMT -7). Enter now!

UPDATE: Only one entry per person, and if it's your first post, please allow up to 48 hours for it to show up.

UPDATE #2: The contest is now over and the winners have been randomly selected. iZel has a little consolation prize for everyone though. If you use the coupon code 5OFFIZEL you'll get a $5 discount off the normal price of $24.95 from Amazon.com [Affiliate]. The coupon code is valid until midnight July 31st, 2009.

Back in March I was visiting with the Zune team for the Microsoft Global MVP Summit, and they gave the MVPs some take-away swag items. I figured I'd pass it along to one lucky reader of Zune Thoughts. The photo above shows what you'll get: a Manhattan Portage shoulder bag, customized with the Zune logo and the "hello from seattle" phrase; a limited-edition grey Zune t-shirt (size large), and a copy of Lost Ones, the Zune-comissioned graphic novel.

So what do you have to do to win? Post a message in this discussion thread telling me one of your favourite songs that's loaded on your Zune right now. What are you grooving out to? What gets your foot tapping? One post (one entry) per person, and the winner will be randomly selected. The contest closes on Monday the 4th of May at 12pm (GMT -7). Yes, that's a longer time line than most of our contests - I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to enter this contest. Photos of each individual item are after the break. Read more...

UPDATE: Our contest is now live, post your entry here.

Remember that awesome 31 Days of the Dragon giveaway contest Digital Home Thoughts was a part of earlier this year? Well this new contest from HP that we've been invited to partake in dwarfs that one on a number of levels. First, the prize pack is even bigger: $6000 in total prizes, consisting of one desktop PC, three laptops, a Media Center extender, a printer, and some software and accessories. Whew! There's some awesome hardware here. The scope is bigger too: there are 50 different blogs involved, and they range from tech blogs like this one, to women's blogs, to student blogs, to Spanish and Portuguese blogs. The complete list is further on in this post. If you do the math, that's $300,000 USD in total prizes, thanks to HP and Microsoft's Windows Live team.

The HP Magic Giveaway is designed around the idea of the magic of sharing, so it's not a coincidence that it's happening as we lead up to the Christmas & holiday season. Each blog is running their own type of contest (and you can enter all of them), but the idea that many of us are focusing on is sharing. One person probably doesn't need four computers all to themselves, so when I kick off my contest later on, it will include some sort of prize-sharing element. Start thinking of who and how you'd share this with others. A contest like this is even more timely when you look around at the financial markets world-wide, and even in your neighbourhood. Stay tuned for more details on my contest.

So what's included in this huge giveaway? Here's the full list:

Hardware

• HP TouchSmart IQ816 PC

• HP HDX 18 series Premium Notebook PC

• HP MediaSmart Connect

• HP Pavilion dv4 series Entertainment Notebook PC (with Windows Live)

• HP Mini 1000 (with XP)

Accessories

• HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless AIO (printer)

• HP 564 Photo Value Pak [thanks for the PDF Gear Diary!]

Software & Entertainment

• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate/Home Premium or Microsoft Windows XP pre-installed on all units (Mini 1000 runs XP)

• Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 (Student-Teacher Edition) – 1 DVD with 3 licenses

• Microsoft Windows Live

• Corel VideoStudio X2

• Kung Fu Panda (2 widescreen DVDs; 1 widescreen Blu-ray disc)

Read more...