I must say that one of the nicest features I like about Firefox is the add-ons. They give me so much power and control.

So, when I read about Add-ons Promotion Contest from spreadfirefox.com, I decided to participate in it and thought lot of you out there might want to do the same.

What is the contest about?

All you need to do to participate is to review an add-on (these can be extensions whether simple or complicated, a group of related extensions or themes) on your blog (if you do not have a blog then Ken, Marco and I would be happy to host it on our sites). Make sure you post a link to the add-on and another to download Firefox on your post.

What do I do once I have posted a review?

Once you are done with a review post, reply to this post and add a link to your add-on review/promotion page. You can also submit it directly to squidoo here (need to create an account).

What is the deadline?

The contest is running from February 1st 2007 to the end of March, 2007 (2 months).

What are the rules?

• The jury will choose among new reviews only (published after February 1st 2007).
• Multiple entries per person are allowed. Maximum 1 prize per person.
• Jury members are excluded.
• The authors of add-ons are excluded as far as their own add-on is concerned, they should be promoting their own add-ons anyway. However they can promote someone else’s add-on for this contest.

What are the prizes?

1. A Firefox T-shirt. Offered by Ken.
2. 24 USD of music downloads from magnatune.com. Offered by Otto.
3. A 1-year registration of a .info domain name. Offered by Jackie.

Goodluck!

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Microsoft Corp. and BT Group PLC, in their effort to encourage developers to create “network mashups” that merge telecommunications features such as voice and text messaging with Web 2.0 applications like mapping and search, have launched a competition called The Connected Services Sandbox contest.

The sponsors will give away prize money ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 in cash. To top that, if the mashup is used by any of the telecommunications companies, the developer would get a share of the revenue.

TopCoder Inc. will manage this event. Developers can sign up for the competition here. 

This is a great way to get people involved with “networking mashups” as that is something which I see very less of. You can see lot of mashups and the APIs used to develop them at ProgrammableWeb.com.

Source: Microsoft launches ‘mashup’ competition for developers

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Google declared in a posting that the Google Summer of Code 2007 is on and they will be accepting application in March.

Google Summer of Code^TM is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Google will be working with a several open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Historically, the program has brought together over 1,000 students with over 100 open source projects, to create hundreds of thousands of lines of code. The program, which kicked off in 2005, is now in its third year, following on from a very successful 2006.

The extent of reach of this program can be judged from the fact that in the year 2006 Google funded over 600 students in 93 countries to work with 100 open source groups.

More details about the program can be obtained from their FAQ page.

Here is an article One student’s experience with Google’s Summer of Code which should give students a feel of the kind of work involved.

In this posting Schultmc of the Gallery open source project sheds some light on the work done by students as part of SOC 2006.

This program sure is a good way for students to pick up on their skills working with some of the best open source projects and brains out there and that too while earning money. Programs like this foster confidence and sense of belonging in the students towards open source projects, which helps the global community.

Good job Google!.

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