It occured to me that many of my fellow bloggers might be interested in a T-Shirt marking this event, that could spark conversations (albeit nerdy ones), and help us to recognize one another outside of the blogosphere.
For that reason I have planned this contest seeking the most creative and funny interpretations of the events of the last week.
I have a feeling that while this blog seems to have tapering interest since the initial bubble, we may have not seen the last of this issue.
You can be one of two elite groups of enlightened consumers:
1) those of us who have the inside scoop on fuzzy math, and
2) the 2 (or more) people whose creativity and sense of humor capture the essence of this situation - the winners of the T-Shirt contest.
I am contributing the bulk of my ad revenue for the 2 prizes, and see below for the discussion of potentially splitting the profits with the winner(s) and some other blogger determined cause or charity.
T-Shirt Design Contest:
Prize:
1. $71.79 +
2. 1/3 of profit from T-Shirt sales of their design* (if we decide to markup the price) +
3. Prime advertising location in the upper right of this blog for at least one month - for their website or blog.
Rules: All entries:
1. must be tasteful and funny - and preferably stylish.
2. must not infringe on any trademarks.
3. must not contain any foul language.
4. must not contain any telephone numbers
5. must be received by Monday 12/18/2006 12:00pm ET (noon).
6. must be provided in proportions close to 2000 x 2000 pixels for proper printing (png, bmp, jpg)
7. may be signed by the designer
Remix Contest:
Prize:
1. $71.79 +
2. Prime advertising location in the upper right of this blog for at least one month - for their website or blog. (below the winner for the T-Shirt Contest)
3. Bragging rights
Rules: All entries:
1. must follow all laws regulating music sampling with respect to any outside samples.
2. must be approximately 3 minutes long - give or take.
3. must not contain any foul language
4. must not contain any telephone numbers
5. must be received by Monday 12/18/2006 12:00pm ET (noon).
6. may contain submitter's information embedded.
Original call available here.
I will choose the winning entries with input from blog comments strongly considered.
I am open to suggestions about what the other 2/3 of the T-Shirt profits (if any) would be used for. Of course I'd love to keep all that cash myself and start a wireless phone company, but I'm sure others have better ideas. (*) Also, we could forego any markup whatsoever but then the prize is not quite as rewarding.
Also, should there be runners up, we could have these turned into T-Shirts as well. While there will be no prize money left for these folks (unless this blog starts generating tons of ad revenue), if we decide to mark up the shirts, the 1/3 profit part of the prize would apply to those runners up.
Please submit all entries to verizonmath at gmail.com. I will post entries as they come in, in a follow up post.
I'd like to seed the T-Shirt contest with my entry (small version) (no I won't declare myself winner - unless of course there are no other entries :).
And of course the Remix Competition has already been seeded by DavMan Verizon-Cant-Do-Math-Money-Remix-By-Davman
23 comments:
Awesome idea with the competition, I know i'll be givin it a shot, even though I have zero talent and will lose :P
I'd love to write an original song for this thing with snippets of the phonecall included but there's no way I could do that by the 18th. Ho hum. check my other originals at www.yonner.co.uk
@yonner
You're right. While the design stuff is something people might be able to crank out in a day, the audio might take longer. What do you think is a good timeframe?
I just listened to your conversation with the Verizon customer rep, sup and mgr. At one time I just wanted to get in there and ask them what they did while in school? Nways the purpose of me writing this note was that I would like you to know about State Telecom/ Public Svc Commissions under whose jurisdiction such a billing matter would fall and if you notify them they would certainly investigate. I know it will be a time consuming activity but trust me somebody needs to do it... tell these big corporations to wake up and smell the coffee and know their dollars from their cents....
Can we submit multiple graphics?
@jsp0421
yeah, no problem, please do.
I have been following this since the beginning, and I have to say its quite hilarious. I figured I could submit a few shirt ideas. Few quick questions, are you looking for a nice basic black and white graphic like your example? Also, I take it we cant use Verizon or VerizonMath?
@michael
You can do whatever you want, but I think designs that are not too complicated would probably look best. I can't remember the last time I saw a t-shirt with an actual photorealistic image on it that looked good. I think simple is probably better, but thats just a matter of opinion :).
I think leaving Verizon out is probably best. A few of the submissions that I have received have had the blog address on the bottom, which could also be removed if necessary - you might want to do the same - if at all.
This blog has kept me laughing all week.
About the t-shirt. Verizon will probably jump on you any way possible if there is even a chance it infringes a trademark regulation.
Just make sure you ship before the court date okay? ;)
Don't know if you've seen this or not...
Check to Verizon
In case you're wondering, it equals $0.002
@prometheusg
Yes, its linked in the coverage section. The original link is here
xkcd.com/verizon and is from
xkcd.com
new to the blog, very funny stuff. kept me entertained for almost an hour.
heres my idea for the shirt
what ever wins on the front of the t-shirt and "and thats my $2¢, ehh i mean $0.02¢..."
Here's the preview version since I don't have hosting at the moment.
Click
@jason
nice entry.
You can email them to me at verizonmath at gmail dot com - then I can get back to you if I need to follow up.
Thanks
g
If anyone wants their submissions on VerizonMath.com (or anything else for that matter) email me: beau@unarchy.com http://verizonmath.com/
YES! Brilliant contest. I'm sorry for those who are wasting their time working on something which will be outdone by team VerizonMath.com
Yes, that's right, it's on! we have the graphic design of Beau Henry and the audio mixing of his mysterious cohort Associate Prime.
Is there a new deadline? (it's just going to make us win by that much more)
@Beau
I'm glad you're onboard. The deadline was tomorrow at noon eastern, but I had some feedback that might be tight for the audio side of things, so I might push that one out a bit.
While I've received many submissions for the T-Shirt contest, I haven't received any remixes - besides DavMan's original.
I've gotten some great T-Shirt submissions, so you might want to tone down your trash talk - you've got some healthy competition :).
Why not send the remainder to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is dedicated to combating abuse of electronics by corporations against consumers or IPaction.org which does similar work through lobbying efforts.
Its me, the guy who posted last week saying that you need to figure out how to capitalize on this. Kudos to you for finding a way to make money off of it.
Hey George, I emailed you with a link to a number of submissions as well... how many are ye at so far? :)
Just sent if 5, 2 of them have two version, so I guess 7 in total. I went with the basic text with a basic border concept. Thats honestly the most I'd wear on a t-shirt after all. Good luck on your designs everyone.
THANK YOU for not letting this go...this is horrific on Verizon's part and I hope you do take this issue to court...THOUSANDS of people would be thankful!!!
I will NEVER go to Verizon because of this.
The thing that I can't stand most is that each Verizon representative seems to just hand you and Peter off to some other representative. Bad, bad business.
@Katio
Thanks for the comment. We'll see what happens... And I agree, they really seem not to care about solving problems, just getting people off the phone...
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