Gadgetopia

The Sound Spectrum guys were cool enough to provide me with another license to give away. The first email to the contact address in the footer gets it. It's been claimed, thanks. This is a stupid way to give this away, but I can't think of anything better right now.

That's easy[ish]. Turn on comment rating, and give something to the highest rated comments for a given period.

That'll push comments, incentivize humor and creativity, and get us, the humble readers, free stuff.

I'm all about free stuff.

Now all ya need to worry about is how to regulate the voting.

If the prizes too frequently go to Kingdom Q Happenstance, Repentant W. Screeches, or this guy Debt Relief who keeps emailing me, the rest of us will likely feel left out.

On second thought, probably not an issue, considering that these folks keep offering to give me iPods and 40-foot plasma screens of their own.

At least you aren't asking my favorite M&M color. I mean, there are some things that a man just doesn't share...

(Definitely NOT Blue.)

Oh, dear. I'm rambling again.

Turn on comment rating, and give something to the highest rated comments for a given period.

Comment rating? That isn't a plugin I'm aware of. Anyone else?

Weeeelll... you know... turn on in the sense of, hmmm, you vote? You pick the most enlightening/humorous/creative comment of the, I dunno, month? To reiterate a point I tried to make during the Great Trickery Debate of '05: This is y'all's baby. We're watching your movie here. We can't really bitch about favoritism in this context. Though a one person one prize approach might be in order. Or at least a 90-day no-prize period for winners.

Alternatively, you could go with the comment with the most entertaining follow-on discussion. Or at least the most follow-on discussion. 'course, that could mean giving a prize for, to pick a random example, having someone accuse you of trickery.

Actually, I was kind of surprised to see that there wasn't some sort of comment-ranking/karma plugin, at least not one apparent to a cursory search. Karma would imply a more formal CommentER tracking system, but comment rating seems kinda obvious. At least in my head, but things are admittedly a mite off up there anyway.

I vote for the Deane's Pick approach. Um... Rather... If I were you, I'd pick the Deane's Pick approach.

And for the rest of y'all, I'd suggest actually looking to see if plugin X exists before I open my big mouth. Shame on ya. Er. Me.

For the record, I did go looking for such a plugin after you mentioned it. It'd be nice if MT offered something like this, but I imagine you'd have to have a TypeKey-like registration system for it.

The testimonials are BS. They're all good and full of praise and of course recommend the upgrade. The free trial... Ehhh... In one word... Annoying. You'll download a visualization with G-Force Upgrade pop up ad's in it first of all. You're watching the G-Force effects on you monitor when periodically messages come up that remind you of the fact that you downloaded a "Free Trial." If you want the "REAL THING" you have to upgrade or put up with the pop up messages. Also, with the free trial, you cannot view the effects full screen. What do you expect for nothing? I would expect this for free from Microsoft as an update but it's from an out side company so... get up the $$$ or be satisfied with what you get.