My Board

I received a book from Pearson which can be used for a competition prize. It\'ll have to be a pretty good competition -- for what I dunno, timeframe I dunno -- so, any ideas? (oh and I\'ll write the review so we don\'t need to worry about getting one from the competition winner)

[b]Firefox & Thunderbird Garage by Chris Hofmann, Marcia Knous and John Hedtke[/b]

Paperback: 384 pages
First Printing: April 2005
Cover Price: $24.99 USD

Welcome to the next Internet revolution

Enter your Firefox and Thunderbird Garage...where you master the incredible free software that\'s helping millions of people use the Web and email faster, more efficiently, and more safely. Your guides know Firefox and Thunderbird better than anyone. They\'re the Mozilla insiders who helped create them—sparking a new Internet revolution, in which real people take back the Internet from monopolists, spammers, and spyware artists!

The basics are just the beginning: this book shows how to customize and extend Firefox and Thunderbird so they\'ll work exactly the way you want, and do more than you ever thought possible. We\'re talking better productivity, faster searches, easier downloads, and more fun.

* Discover why Firefox and Thunderbird blow away Internet Explorer and Outlook Express

* Make Firefox even more secure: Manage passwords, clean caches and history, and more

* Trash unwanted popups, ads, and other Web annoyances

* Make the most of Firefox\'s built-in search tools and shortcuts

* Create \"live bookmarks\" that update automatically

* Harness tabbed browsing to get more done faster

* Download files more quickly and reliably

* Install today\'s hottest Firefox and Thunderbird plug-ins

* Set up email, RSS, and newsgroup accounts fast—and manage them efficiently

* Organize the messages you want, and dump the messages you don\'t want

* Get under the hood! Hack Firefox and Thunderbird configuration files

* Includes quick-references to keyboard/mouse shortcuts, security, and more

With its easy, quick-learning modules, insider tips, rants, and blog entries, Firefox and Thunderbird Garage is far more than a software manual: it\'s your guide to the new Internet revolution!

About the Authors

Chris Hofmann is Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation. For eight years, he worked at Netscape and was involved in every Netscape and Mozilla Browser release since Netscape 3.01. In August 2003 he was hired as the first employee at the Mozilla Foundation and spent the first 18 months in startup mode, working with the small team that has been successful in getting the Mozilla Foundation off the ground and running as a independent and self-sustaining organization and continuing to organize the work of thousands of open source contributors to make great Internet software. In 2004, he contributed a wide variety of management efforts that led to the worldwide release of Firefox 1.0 in November, and is helping to fulfill the Mozilla Foundation\'s goal of continuing to support open web standards and provide innovation and choice for Internet client software.

Marcia Knous is a Project Manager at the Mozilla Foundation and has been working with the Mozilla Project for five years. She is involved with both the Firefox and Thunderbird projects. In the freelance realm, she is a frequent contributor to a number of online websites, including [url=\"http://www.fanstop.com\"]http://www.fanstop.com[/url], where she writes a weekly NFL column called Monday Night Musings. In addition, she has written dozens of online articles about the historical contributions women have made to the world of sports. Marcia has a Masters in Cinema-Television and enjoys working on films in her spare time. She recently wrapped up cinematography on the documentary Common Hours. Born and raised in the splendid confines of New England, Marcia now resides in the Bay Area.

John Hedtke has written 24 books, close to 100 magazine articles, and hundreds of manuals and online help systems for all kinds of technical and non-technical documentation for all levels of readers. John owns and operates a company that provides writing, consulting, and training services to private and government clients in all fields. He also speaks to professional groups all over the world on subjects such as career planning, time management, and writing books and magazine articles. John is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. In his spare time, John writes buttons for a button company in California, donates blood, and sings and plays banjo and guitar (something he\'s been doing since 1971). He says he gets a lot of requests when he plays the banjo, but he goes ahead and plays it anyhow. A long-time resident of Seattle, John now lives in Eugene, OR, with his amazingly patient wife, Marilyn, where they share four cats. He can be reached through his website, [url=\"http://www.hedtke.com\"]http://www.hedtke.com[/url].

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Google Scavenger Hunt (everyone can do this)
Scripting / Graphix (like ya said in chat)
FF Extension/Theme/Plugin (not everyone would be able to enter...)
Raffle? (could help pay for shipping lol)

us3rX /ph34r.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':ph34r:\' />

good ideas, Jer. I forgot to mention earlier that I do have two copies of the book, so we could easily do two contests, one for graphics one for coding of some sort.

@graphix - have a FF Wallpaper Contest /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' />

@coding(if ya mean Vb/C++/etc) - FF Extension/Theme/Plugin

@coding(all other) - Ecard script /angel_not.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(not)\' />

us3rX /ph34r.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':ph34r:\' />

lol the very mention of an ecard script seems to send scripters scattering for the hills /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />

I like the idea of a ff wallpaper; shouldn\'t be a problem using their images as it\'s open source.

This is just going out on a limb of ideas, why not contact firefox and see if some sort of relevant signatures could be gathered for the books? Sounds kina cheesy but i mean, firefox has come so far, something like that could be worth money later on down the track (if it is, perhaps keep one for KN /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />) If we could con Bill Gates to signing it we could sell it on eBay lol

I saw this idea on a forum...after a google search for \"contest ideas\"

[quote]A scavenger hunt is where you hide a graphic somewhere on your Web site or on the Web site of someone you link with. If you use someone else\'s site, then you provide clues as to where the graphic is. When the people find the graphic, they click on it, and then they go to the entry form for your sweepstakes.

Collecting icons is more involved. I don\'t have a clue as to how the coding works, but I suspect it\'s done with cookies. One of the major sites, Universal Studios I think, had one of these going a while ago. You had to visit their site for 5 weeks in a row and click on the special graphic. It changed each time. Once it was the Cat in the Hat, then a dinosaur, and so forth. You just followed links and you \"found\" the right graphic. After you found them all, you were taken to the entry form. I think these are a lot more involved.[/quote]

[quote]Well we\'ve been test running a treasure hunt around our site - a kinda easter egg hunt, find six logos and when you get all six you\'re in the draw. It\'s proved pretty popular, but has had the added advantage of people clicking on pages they don\'t normally get to or visit - it\'s a very simple way of getting people familiar with your site and content![/quote]

Sounds great! Now we need to know limitations, do staff get the chance? Obviously admins dont which is fine with me

Those admins who want to participate can; it\'ll just mean they won\'t be included in discussion as to where the icons would go /bigwink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\';)\' />

Well i wont participate, i am sure there is people out there who can put this book to better use then me lol

us3rX /ph34r.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':ph34r:\' />

Like jer, I won\'t participate, purely because it wouldn\'t look fair if I ended up winning (unlikely, I know).

I like the idea of hiding small icons around the place, maybe a few on the forum then a few more on other sites. Could put say 10 small images up and whoever finds 8? or more gets entered into the draw. I know a few places for some hard buggers. /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' />

Here\'s another idea to add a bit more challenge and a twist. Instead of just plunking icons all over the place, how about a short story with clues as to what icons they are supposed to be looking for? I thought of adding that because we have so many different site icons, and might help if people know what to look for instead of just giving them a list to go and find.

That sounds great, a treasure hunt!

All sounds good to me.

Was going to say don't do this yet, save it for a month or two. But by then the prize won't be so special. How long until it's released?

Remember rob, it\'ll take a while to get all the images up, decide where they are going, make sure we know where they are, etc. Then it\'ll take a while for people to actually find them. I can see why you\'d want to wait a bit, but I think the sooner it can start, the better.