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Aspiring fashionistas can get their glam on with style icon Kim Kardashian and the Equinox phone. Beginning November 9, Kim's fans can enter the "Get Your Glam On" sweepstakes sponsored by Sony Ericsson which will award one lucky winner a trip to Los Angeles to meet Kim.

The winner will receive the ultimate makeover from her personal glam squad, including a day and night look that coincides with the phones' unique day/night features. BUZZMEDIA will document the winner's entire experience in a video and feature it on Kim's official site, as well as promote it across it's community of leading entertainment news Websites. For additional information, including official rules, visit: www.kimkardashian.com or www.facebook.com/seusa.

Aspiring fashionistas can get their glam on with style icon Kim Kardashian and the Equinox phone. Beginning November 9, Kim's fans can enter the "Get Your Glam On" sweepstakes sponsored by Sony Ericsson which will award one lucky winner a trip to Los Angeles to meet Kim.

The winner will receive the ultimate makeover from her personal glam squad, including a day and night look that coincides with the phones' unique day/night features. BUZZMEDIA will document the winner's entire experience in a video and feature it on Kim's official site, as well as promote it across it's community of leading entertainment news Websites. For additional information, including official rules, visit: www.kimkardashian.com or www.facebook.com/seusa.

In celebration of the stylish Equinox(TM) phone, tennis star Maria Sharapova will make an appearance at the grand opening of a new T-Mobile store in Los Angeles on October 31, 2009.

At the event, Sony Ericsson will hold a Maria Sharapova look-a-like contest. Fashionistas who think they can match Maria's style will get the chance to meet Maria and compete to win the title of Maria's best look-a-like. 

Swing by to meet Maria in person, you could be selected by Maria, herself, as a winner in the Maria Look-a-like contest, enjoy other prize opportunities and see what else Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile are serving up.

Whether you look like Maria or feel like dressing up like her for Halloween, come to the Grand Opening event to enter the Maria Sharapova Look-a-like contest. See if Maria herself picks you as the winner!

Five lucky Jonas Brothers fans and their friends and family members had a lot more to cheer about this weekend. That's because they submitted the winning videos in a Green Screen Community video contest during the Jonas Brothers' recent world tour.

The winners were hosted this past weekend by Verizon Wireless and LG Mobile Phones, compliments of Connecticut's Mohegan Sun, for a fun-filled weekend, which included a Saturday night concert at Mohegan Sun Arena. The following day the lucky winners played kickball with Kevin, Nick and Joe at the Kick for Change event held at Dodd Stadium in Norwich, Conn., home of the Connecticut Defenders baseball team.

CTIA-The Wireless Association announced the winners for the first annual CTIA Hot for the Holidays awards program, revealing this year's must-have mobile consumer electronics products and applications.

Winners across seven categories included "hottest:"

• Bluetooth Accessory - iLane from Intelligent Mechatronic Systems.
• Camera Phone - Nokia N86 8MP.
• Mobile CE Device - Eye-Fi Explore Video Card.
• Mobile Consumer Application - Jitterbug LiveNurse.
• Mobile Internet Device or Netbook - MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot for CDMA 1xEVDO RevA from Novatel Wireless .
• Novelty Accessory - Slim Data USB Card from Kempler & Strauss.,
• Smartphone - HTC Touch Pro2 .

Garnering the most online votes, Magneat from YOUnison was named the CTIA 2009 Hottest Web Pick. The Samsung Reclaim earned the most text votes onsite in San Diego and took home the CTIA 2009 Hottest in Show award.

It you want to buy the HTC Touch Pro2 as gift,  beware .Although the HTC Touch Pro2 received excellent reviews, it has been out-of-stock for a while and is not expected to be in stock until later this month.

You have until midnight tonight, August 14, to enter to win this month's giveaway for a Palm Pre over on Palm's Facebook page. Just click on the Win a Palm Pre tab and post a comment letting Palm know why you need a Palm Pre

The most common words that have cropped up in the comments that have been received appear on the Palm blog. There will be another Palm contest next month. It looks like "Pre", "love" and "new" are tops.

COMMENTARY:

There has been controversy lately over what Palm monitors on the Palm Pre.  We think the matter has been inflated by Palm Pre bloggers who are running out of news and apps to write about.  If our readers really knew how much information carriers, app developers, GPS service providers and other smartphone-related offerings have on them, you'd be shocked.  Your data follows you everywhere you go. 

We are in the process of developing mobile apps and have discovered analytics that would scare Big Brother....remember it is 25 years after 1984!

During the  “Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009,” fans who create green screen videos at the Verizon/LG booth at Jonas Brothers shows, or those who create videos via their mobile phones can enter for a chance to play the ultimate kickball game, live and in person, against Nick, Joe and Kevin.

Kevin Jonas said, “…I mean, a kickball contest? How cool is that?”

Fans will be able to either jam with the Jonas Brothers or play kickball with them via a green screen video live at the concert venues, at home, or from their mobile phones. They can then enter their videos on http://VCASTLive.vzw.com, where V CAST Live members will vote on them. There will be five weekly winners based on the videos that receive the highest number of votes each week. The Jonas Brothers will select the grand prize winner from the five weekly winners.

The third annual LG U.S. National Texting Championship, concluded  with 15-year-old Kate Moore from Des Moines, Iowa as the winner. Moore, won the title of the LG U.S. National Texting Champion, along with $50,000 in prize money by texting on an LG enV3.

The winning phrase was "Zippity Dooo Dahh Zippity Ayy ... My oh MY, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine Comin' my way ... ZippittyDooDahZippityAay! WondeRful feeling, Wonderful day!" which Moore completed flawlessly in less than 60 seconds. The contestants used the new LG enV3 phone, the newest edition in the enV family, which features a full QWERTY keypad.

"When I heard the final phrase, I got so nervous and thought how can I finish that!" said winner Moore. "But apparently, my thumbs are faster than everyone else's! I'm so excited to be this year's champion."

Kate told AP:

"Let your kid text during dinner! Let your kid text during school! It pays off .Your kid could win money and publicity and a phone."

More frequently sent 4,000 texts-per-month, eight months after she got her first cell phone.

Moore won the title of texting championship after beating step sisters Erin Fink, 15, and Morgan Dynda, 14, both from Pooler, GA. The two sisters and best friends drew gasps from the crowd as they went head to head in a semi-final texting showdown in which Dynda came out on top, placing her in the final round where she competed against Moore.

This morning at the WES 2009 Conference, BlackBerry Partners Fund announced the 2009 BlackBerry Developers Challenge. This is the second year that the challenge is running, although the focus for this year's contest has shifted and entries will be evaluated on both the application submitted and its supporting business plan.

Developers can pre-register now at www.blackberrypartnersfund.com to receive details on the challenge. Submissions officially open on June 1^st and the winner will be selected at the BlackBerry Developers Conference November 9-11 in San Francisco. Full contest rules and regulations will be revealed on June 1^st.

The Grand Prize Package worth $50,000  includes a $25,000 Cash Prize and a $25,000 value package including a mentoring session by RIM and an opportunity to pitch BlackBerry Partners Fund for a potential investment. It also includes a free Alliance membership. A runner-up will receive a $10,000 cash prize.All Finalists will receive their DevCon registration for free. To be eligible it must be a working BlackBerry application from a start-up, not-professionally financed (maximum of $1MM outside investment.)

A panel of judges will select 10 finalists by looking for the most compelling product or service, clearly defined value proposition, viable business model, and entrepreneurs who have the ability to execute.

Final judging will take place at DevCon, where each finalist must present their application or service to be considered for the Grand Prize. Submissions open June 1st and close September 15th.

LG Mobile Phones is partnering with crowdSPRING for a new competition to define the future of personal mobile communication.

This year's competition is even bigger and better than last year's:  first place will be awarded $20,000, second place awarded $10,000 and third place awarded $5,000.

To reward as many people as possible in the
name of creativity, LG will be giving out 40 honorable mentions of $1,000 plus an LG U.S. phone!

They need U.S. residents (citizen or green card holder) age 18 (or age of majority in state of residence) and older.

They give participants a chance to design the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in awards. They want designers to exercise creative imagination

They are looking for a cool new concept or "big idea" supported by usage scenario illustrations.

Submissions may be illustrated or rendered in any format - hand sketches, digital drawings, or renderings - rendering tool used will not affect judging process.

LG and crowdSPRING have partnered with Autodesk®, a world leader in 2D and 3D design software. Autodesk will be providing a FREE 15-day trial of SketchBook Pro to all participants of this competition.

For more information go to crowdSpring.

Deadline is  June 7, 2009 @ 11:59 p.m. PST.

Microsoft ran a mobile app contenst during Mobile Incubation week, lats week.

The six finalists were:

• Networks in Motion - Plans to build a mobile app that offers turn-by-turn directions and hyper-local search. The developer claims that it has the same experience as a GPS device.
• DJ Nitrogen - building an application to facilitate the legal sharing of user-generated content, such as ringtones and music mash-ups
• VoiceMuffler - App will enable real-time, two-way speech-to-speech translation designed for foreign military personnel and civilian travelers
•  Motolingo - Telematics solution that will monitor car diagnostics and report mobile phone behavior in the car   
• VisTracks - Plans to build an enterprise app for real-time product location and tracking company shipments
• BrightKite - Extending their current  location-based social networking tool to Windows Mobile

And the winner was:  Networks in Motion. A video interview follows.

NAVTEQ, announcdes the semifinalists of the Americas edition of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge.

Fourteen contestants have  been selected to move on to Final Judging in Americas and the winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on April 2, 2009 during CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas. The awards ceremony is open to all CTIA attendees and will also be broadcast live online at www.LBSChallenge.com. The semifinalists, by category, for NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge - The Americas include:

Content

• CellSoul, Inc: Azinfo by CellSoul is a mosque-locator and a location-based timings calculator for Muslim prayers.
• Loci Smart, LLC: Loci Smart provides localized and personalized content, ads, maps and directions to users based on profile preferences.
• Yojo Mobile, Inc: Yojo Mama finds parents what they need, when and where they need it most.

Entertainment & Leisure

• Creativity Software: Rough Guides Mobile Travel Guide is a location aware city guide with User Generated content and social networking features.
• Cutlass: Hollywood-USA is a GPS tour guide to movie locations nearest you and includes RSS news feeds from The Hollywood Reporter and social networked Make-a-Scene.

Navigation

• Gowrabattini, Inc: Where is My Car helps you to never wander for a parked car - park the car, set the location, navigate back to the car.
• TrafficZag, Inc: Traffic Share facilitates location of traffic events such as accidents among commuters.
• Urban Mapping, Inc: URBANWARE Parking provides drivers with accurate and timely off-street parking information that can be incorporated into LBS applications.

March  is really madness month and for some lucky betters, I mean speculator, it could mean a million bucks. Yahoo! Sports is giving college basketball fans a triple-double of madness with mobile access to brackets, millions in prize money, up-to-the minute college basketball news, and easy search tools.

Yahoo! Sports is offering $1 million for the perfect bracket and other prizes for top performers. This year, Yahoo! is allowing fans unprecedented mobile access during the Big Dance to keep them at the top of their game. The site will also offer up-to-the-minute news from the games. Yahoo!'s college basketball offerings give fans millions reasons to 'go a little mad.'

You have to  complete your brackets before registration closes at tip off of the first game of Round 1 on Thursday, March 19.
 

This season, Yahoo! is launching a dedicated mobile tournament Web site (http://m.yahoo.com/ncaa) allowing fans to follow all of the action and their favorite teams from the convenience of their Internet-enabled mobile phone. For the first time, Yahoo! allows users to track their brackets via mobile devices as well as the progress of others in their group. Fans also have access to up-to-the minute scores, news, schedules, pictures and expert commentary while on-the-go.

Here's a new twist on contests to get more people to use TurboTax software. TurboTax has launched a campaign through social networking and widgets, only. They launced a  social networking website Freeloader Nation on myspace and are offering games with prizes for social networking status updaters only.

TurboTax SuperStatus is a contest where TurboTax gives users a challenge to solve it by updating their status on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

This weeks' prize is to a trip to New York to see a taping of Saturday Night Live by posting a status about TurboTax. Other prizes include, cash, iPods & DVDs, and tickets to sporting events and top NBC shows. The grand prize is a tripled TurboTax Refund up to $25,000. The game can be played through Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, or all three.

The game requires that the user grab the widget or visit SuperStatusContest.com to find out when each TurboTax SuperStatus game is happening, read the challenge, and check out the prize that's up for grabs.

Then social networkers get to play on one or all of the social networks by updating status with answers to the challenge.There is a deadline and counter clock to see when the contest ends.

How to Play on Twitter:

1. Become a follower of TurboTax on Twitter
   
2. Tweet your response to the challenge
   
3. Increase your chances: play as many times as you want during each challenge countdown. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

Tipping Point's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) will be sponsoring the Pwn2Own hacking contest for the 3rd time.  It will be held during the CanSecWest Security Conference March 16-20th in Vancouver, BC. Hackers are invited to crack into browsers and mobile device for the chance to win $10,000 and the actual devices along with one year of phone service if a phone is a hacked.

Device and software makers don't have to worry because, ZDI will purchase all winning vulnerabilities  and hand them over to the affected vendors, and coordinate public disclosure. 

The Zero Day Initiative will pay $5000 per browser bug, and $10,000 per mobile bug. The first person to crack any of the mobile devices will also get to keep that device along with a one year phone contract.  The first person to crack any of the browsers will get to keep the laptop it was running on.  All winners will be asked to sign and agree to the general ZDI Non Disclosure Agreement.

Virgin Mobile will be sponsoring Britney Spears' next tour titled, "Virgin Mobile Presents the Circus Starring Britney Spears," featuring special guests The PussyCat Dolls. The circus-themed tour is due to kick off in New Orleans on March 3, 2009 with a planned 31 dates in the United States along with the Ocean 2.

In conjunction with sponsorship of the "Circus" tour, Virgin Mobile USA will launch its new Ocean 2 multimedia device. Select fans at the private show will be given an Ocean 2 to chronicle the event. This "Ocean 2 Camera Crew" can blog, IM, email, post to social networking sites and send photos from this one mobile phone to share with friends and fans.

Forum Nokia is  Calling All Innovators, a global contest for developers to create mobile applications that will help to better society. 

Apisphere Inc. (www.apisphere.com), a leading provider of location-awareness services for mobile business applications and devices, is looking for application developers and independent software vendors (ISV) who want to integrate location-awareness into their mobile enterprise or consumer applications. Apisphere will be accepting submissions from ISVs starting this week at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment. The company will invest $30,000 to $50,000 of development time into enhancing one best-in-class mobile application with its location-awareness platform

Namco Networks, the leading publisher and developer of mobile games and entertainment for mass-market casual gamers, today announced the PAC-MAN Fever Mobile Tournament at this year's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). The tournament will be held at Namco Networks' booth #141 at PAX, August 29-31, 2008.

Contestants in the PAC-MAN Fever Mobile Tournament at PAX will compete on AT&T phones and battle for the best score in PAC-MAN. The top four daily scores earn a spot in the daily final challenge where they will compete for a prize pack that includes a new phone from AT&T.

Verizon Wireless announced it will sends 40 lucky fans on vacation with the Jonas Brothers. Customers who purchase the Samsung Glyde or Verizon Wireless Juke by Samsung, register online and download V CAST Music with Rhapsody on their PCs will have the chance to be entered into a sweepstakes to win a trip to The Bahamas to see the Jonas Brothers perform at Atlantis, Paradise Island resort on Dec. 13, 2008.

Between Sept. 2 and Nov. 1, 2008, customers who purchase or upgrade to a Samsung Glyde or Verizon Wireless Juke by Samsung at participating Verizon Wireless or Circuit City locations, register the purchase online and install Verizon Wireless' V CAST Music with Rhapsody software on their computers will be able to instantly download four complimentary exclusive live versions of songs from the Jonas Brothers' hot new album, "A Little Bit Longer." Customers will also have the chance to be entered to win a trip to Atlantis to see the Jonas Brothers.