Contest Details

Space. The final frontier. Also, one heck of a challenge, when you’re talking about hard drive space. It’s a funny thing, when you think about it; in the age of 300GB hard drives we’re still running out of space. Maybe it’s because certain software manufacturers (especially those in the video game world) steadfastly hold on to the belief that 60 gig hard drives grow on trees. Still, with the constant compiling programs, collecting music files, creating family videos, and creating backups, many of us have started to put hard drives on our weekly shopping lists! Eggs, milk, lettuce, Maxtor, ketchup… Will it ever end?!

Not if we have to say something about it!

Developer Shed, the cool network you’ve all come to know and love, is feeding your large file addiction with this month’s contest giveaway, a brand new U.S. Logic 60GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive. That’s right, a 60GB, USB 2.0, External Hard Drive! Why, that’s big enough to store 15,000 MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files! Or, 60 two-hour MPEGs! Or a copy of Neverwinter Nights (including expansion packs) and The Sims 2 - although there probably wouldn’t be much space for anything else, save for maybe a small log file. Still, this is a heck of a deal!



But how, pray tell, do you enter this month’s giveaway?

The rules are simple:

1) Write and submit an article to norbert@developershed.com, with the subject "Developer Shed January Hard Drive Contest" for publication in any of our websites and win this awesome device. The article, a tutorial, hardware review, tech-oriented personal experience tale, or news-worthy report on a tech related field (no corporate business coverage of “X, Inc. is suing Y.com,” please), must be about one of the topics covered on one of the following websites: Dev Shed, ASP Free, Dev Articles, Dev Hardware, and SEO Chat. This pretty much covers all aspects of development and today’s technology. The article must be at least 1500 words in length, subdivided into at least 5 pages of information. (Check out http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/How_...working_Basics/ for an example of what we’re looking for.)

2) The Contest runs until January 31, 2004, so your article must be in by that time. Articles may be submitted in the following formats: DOC, SWX, RTF, TXT, and HTML (please do not use the “Save as HTML” function in MS Word or Star Office). If there are images in the story, please send them in a .ZIP file containing both the pictures and the article. Articles (and inquiries) should be sent to norbert@developershed.com, with the subject " Developer Shed January Hard Drive Contest."

3) Judging will look at subject matter, quality of content (so make it interesting), and grammar. In fact, chances are that if we have to edit it, you ain't winning. (Ok, so that's a bit of an exageration.) It might still be published, so not all is lost! You may yet still have the chance at the fame and geek chic that comes with having your writings read by millions worldwide. I don't want to have to spend three days correcting grammatical mistakes, though - I'm not your English teacher, daing it!

By submitting an article you agree to give Developer Shed exclusive publication rights to the story. All the credit for genius, however, will stay with you, so no worries about my placing our grubby little name on the story and claiming that it’s our brainchild. The winner will be announced on the website and via phone call, or e-mail, or IM – which ever is easiest to reach him/her at.

Start your typing!!!

Gnorb

P.S.

Check this posting once in a while in case there's something which needs to be changed in the contest rules.