Each month you will be able to enter to win various illustrious prizes. Premier Subscribers have the additional benefit of being automatically entered each month, and don’t have to worry about entering each time. 

This month the giveaway is an Xbox 360 game pack featuring five great games (we will work with the winner to make sure he/she doesn’t get a game already owned). A second place winner will receive the new generation iPod nano (5G). Last but certainly not least, 12 lucky winners will win a guitar shirt provided by Think Geek! I rocked this thing on Halloween, and it was hilarious. Check out this video of someone far more skilled than me making it wail:

Frankly, I can’t imagine a better way to get kicked out of a retirement home.

Here is how to enter online. Just hit the discussion and tell us your favorite guitar tune. Winners will be drawn at random, so don’t worry if your favorite tune is an REO Speedwagon hit. We won’t count it against you. And just to be clear: Premier Subscribers are entered automatically (but you can still tell us your favorite tune if you want to).

You’ll need to register an account if you don’t have one. 

The contest will close at the end of the month (when another one will soon after begin). The official rules can be found here. 

Unrelated to the contest, I am also pleased to announce that Premier Subscribers will shortly be receiving a Think Geek coupon code good for $5 off purchases of $25, or $10 off $40. This could help with your holiday shopping. Be sure to verify that your email address attached to your registration is current and accurate. 

With less than 24 hours left in our Paintbrush/Backblaze Contest, we need more entries!

We’re really looking for some awesomely cheesy drawings here, so don’t feel like you need to be a pro artist. The cheesier, the better!

As a reminder, we’re giving away two 1-year subscriptions to Backblaze to the most badical drawings! The contest ends tomorrow (Friday) at 1PM MST, so get to it!

We’ve had a couple of really great entries for our Paintbrush/Backblaze Contest but would love to see more!

We’re really looking for some awesomely cheesy drawings here, so don’t feel like you need to be a pro artist. The cheesier, the better!

As a reminder, we’re giving away two 1-year subscriptions to Backblaze to the most badical drawings! The contest ends this Friday, so get to it!

Yesterday we posted about a snazzy OS X-based painting app that could be considered the equivalent of MS Paint for Mac. Well, we decided it’d be a lot of fun to have a little contest to bring out the inner-artist in all of our readers!

Send in a drawing created ONLY with Paintbrush (a completely free download), and we’ll pick the two best ones. Those winners will each receive a 1-year subscription to Backblaze!

The contest goes now through this Friday, May 1, at 1pm MST.

How to Submit Your Drawing

To submit your drawing, simply post a comment here with a link to your full-resolution image (it can be hosted anywhere: Flickr, Photobucket, ImageShack, etc). Including a story with your photo will earn you brownie points. Also, you can enter as many times as you’d like.

NOTE: Keep this family friendly. Anything you wouldn’t show your 4-year-old niece will be removed and you’ll be disqualified.

[UPDATE: Seems we need to start adding a graphic of a cheek with a tongue planted firmly in it for articles like this. Lighten up folks.]

My opinion might be slightly skewed, thanks to jealous rage, but I can’t help but think that Apple’s big billion-app prize could’ve gone to someone more deserving than the 13-year-old who finally took it home. Like me, for instance.

Connor Mulcahey of Connecticut is the official grand prize winner, though, like it or not, confirmed by Apple this Friday. He’ll be taking home a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate. The app he downloaded to win was Bump, which allows you to share contact information wirelessly between iPhones or iPod touches.

First of all, why does a 13-year-old even need a contact sharing application? Is he networking? Does he have that many friends with iPhones? Actually, why does he even have an iPhone or an iPod touch in the first place? One thing’s for sure, the kind of 13-year-old kid who has an iPhone probably isn’t so hard up for cash that he needs Apple to give him a bunch a free stuff. And what’s he going to do with a MacBook Pro and a Time Capsule? Edit and back-up skateboarding vids? OK, I’m done venting.

In all seriousness, Apple probably couldn’t have asked for a better winner. The teen market is one area where they still have lots of room to grow, as a recent survey indicates. Which is partially why I’m so baffled that one could actually win, since the odds seem stacked against it, percentage-wise. Also, it shows that kids like using Apple products, too, even if Microsoft stuff does appeal more to the highly lucrative 4-year-old girl demographic.

Besides the prize-giving, Apple also introduced a new online video advertisement trumpeting their own achievement. The ad, which appears on the New York Times web site, among others, is basically an extended, animated version of the “Thanks a billion” graphic that they’re using on the Apple homepage. It dominates the header and sidebar of the Times’ site, and Apple probably wishes the news would also blot out the nasty black mark their reputation has suffered at the hands of the now notorious Baby Shaker app.

I wonder what effect the promotion and giveaway had on download numbers. Only Apple will probably ever know for sure, but if we see more sweepstakes and similar sales tactics in the future, that’s a pretty good indication that the campaign was successful. Here’s hoping it was, because Daddy still needs a new Macbook Pro. Maybe I can catch a late flight to Connecticut and intercept a delivery from Apple en route to a certain 13-year old’s house…