Whew! What a big, but fun job. I had to make sure I got everyone entered (over 1000 entries!) and followed all the rules. It was a blast to hand out prizes and make people’s day. Winners will receive an email from me.

Thank you to all the guest contributors, prize contributors, all of the participants, and those who spread the word — especially those who did it multiple times. OK, OK, I’ll stop talking and start announcing.

• One $80 gift certificate to Amazon from Meryl ($10 for every year). Jon Phillips
  
• One $100 gift certificate to Amazon from Mark Wegner of The Diamond Games. Tim Childers
  
• Full version of Microsoft Expression Studio 2. Deborah Edwards-Onoro
• Peter Shankman: copy of his book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them. Sharon
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media‘s Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design. Jacob Cass
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media‘s Indi Young’s Mental Models. John Hewitt
• Problogger Darren Rowse provides a copy of his book, Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. David Laprad
• AWAI’s Nick Usborne’s Million Dollar Secrets for Online Copywriting. Bob Younce
  
• Two copies of PowerReuse by Softpowerhouse, a document assembly software designed for boosting productivity for professionals. Lou Rosenfeld and Ted Demopoulos
• Access to Teaching Sells for two months from Copyblogger Brian Clark. Jamie Grove
• How to Make a Living as an SEO Writer from Yuwanda Black. Joanna Young
• Tara Calishain-authored book. Bill Moore
• Ted Demopoulos: One copy of Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears). Thursday Bram
• Airport Mania: 3 copies (2 Mac and 1 PC). Travis Vocino, Joe Heuer, and Joey
• One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Mary McDonald
  
• One copy of Wit and Wisdom of a Regular Joe from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Jon Symons
• One copy of New Idiot-Proof Guide to Customer Loyalty from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Yvonne Russell
• One copy of Andy King‘s Website Optimization. Dustin Brewer and Mark Wegner
• One copy of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Tara Calishain
• Full copy of Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper PC game from Mark Kanter of Bang Out Games. Meryl’s Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper review. Chanon Sajjamanochai
• 80 Photoshop brush packs from Jacob Cass. Oleg Kuznecov

Unannounced blog entry prizes

• Custom blog design by Jon of Spyre Studios and Freelance Folder. Yvonne Russell

Guest Blogger Prizes: Some contributors donated prizes specifically for guest bloggers or provided more than one copy, one of which goes to a guest blogger.

• One copy of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Janet Lee Johnson
• One copy of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. Yuwanda Black
• One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Anne Wayman
• One copy of Andy King‘s Website Optimization. James Chartrand
• One full copy of PowerReuse software from KK Cheng and SoftPowerhouse. John Hewitt
• Big Kahuna Reef 2: 2 copies (1 Mac and 1 PC) Jamie Grove and Paige Eissinger
  
• Ricochet Infinity: 1 copies (PC) Bob Younce

July 15 has arrived, but it doesn’t go away until midnight. So if you want a chance to win prizes, better get movin’! If you are stalking us on Twitter, subscribed to one of our many exciting feeds and newsletters, or did something else and haven’t emailed us, be sure to do that.

I will announce winners when random.org has done its job and I’ve done all the administrative part on my end. All details here:

http://www.meryl.net/2008/07/final-blog-birthday-bash-prizes/

All the guest bloggers have blogged. All the post-related prizes awarded. That leaves the winners from last week’s entries and the final prizes (announced July 8). But it’s not over yet! You have one more week (July 15) to get a chance to win one of the following remaining prizes:

• One $80 gift certificate to Amazon from Meryl ($10 for every year).
• One $100 gift certificate to Amazon from Mark Wegner of The Diamond Games.
• Full version of Microsoft Expression Studio 2.
• Peter Shankman: copy of his book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them.
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media’s Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design.
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media’s Indi Young’s Mental Models.
• Problogger Darren Rowse provides a copy of his book, Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.
• AWAI’s Nick Usborne’s Million Dollar Secrets for Online Copywriting.
• Two copies of PowerReuse by Softpowerhouse, a document assembly software designed for boosting productivity for professionals.
• Access to Teaching Sells for two months from Copyblogger Brian Clark.
• How to Make a Living as an SEO Writer from Yuwanda Black.
• Tara Calishain-authored book.
• Ted Demopoulos: One copy of Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears).
• Airport Mania: 3 copies (2 Mac and 1 PC).
• One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.
• One copy of Wit and Wisdom of a Regular Joe from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.
• One copy of New Idiot-Proof Guide to Customer Loyalty from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.
• One copy of Andy King‘s Website Optimization.
• One full copy of Astraware Classic Collection, which includes Astraware Sudoku, Astraware Solitaire, and Astraware Board games. Astraware is one of Meryl’s favorite — if not the best — developer of handheld software.
• Full copy of First Class Flurry PC game from Chanon Sajjamanochai of Viquagames. Meryl’s First Class Fury review.
• Two copies of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger.
• Full copy of Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper PC game from Mark Kanter of Bang Out Games. Meryl’s Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper review.

How do I win?

You’ll get the following amount of entries based on the following guidelines:

• 10 entries: Become a twitter stalker/follower for MerylKEvans
• 10 entries: Link to:
  • Any meryl.net page
  • CSSCollection.com
  • Bionic Ear Blog
• 10 entries: Subscribe and activate to our RSS feed by email.
  • Subscribe to both meryl’s notes blog and games
  • Subscribe only to meryl’s notes blog
  • Subscribe only to games
  • Subscribe to Bionic Ear Blog
  • Subscribe to meryl’s notes, the newsletter (not the same thing as the above)
  • Subscribe to the games newsletter (contact me with your email address and I’ll add you — doesn’t seem to be a way to add yourself. Crazy.)
• 10 entries: Link to any meryl.net blog entry.
• 5 entries: Link to any of the following pages from a twitter tweet:
  • Any meryl.net page
  • CSSCollection.com
  • Bionic Ear Blog

You can do the above anytime between May 21 (date of birthday bash announcement) and July 15. To guarantee your entries, please email us by 11:59pm on July 15 what you’ve done and include links. Who can keep up with hundreds of entries? Also let me know if you have a Mac — gotta make sure we have winners of Mac prizes!

Remember, you can only win one of the above prizes — so it doesn’t hurt your chances to tell others about it — it increases them!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

We have a lot of prizes to award again. But we also have lots of prizes remaining — some you can win by commenting and others by linking, signing up, or one of these.

When Good Clients Have Bad Ideas entry prizes: $450 basic WordPress customization package from Kim Beasley.  one copy of Andy King’s upcoming Website Optimization.

Winners: Karen Putz wins the WordPress package and John Hewitt wins Website Optimization!

The Power of Story in the Digital Age prizes: Lifetime subscription for RadioTime.com RedButton software — TiVO for radio where you can pause and record live radio. Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.

Winners: Elisa Miller wins Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace and and John Hewitt wins RadioTime.com RedButton software.

Thank you, Random.org for drawing the winners.

Congratulations, everyone! More birthday presents coming your way! Add a comment to this entry by 11:59pm today for a chance to win.

More copies of Website Optimization are up for the taking at CSS Collection.

Prizes: Lifetime subscription for RadioTime.com RedButton software — TiVO for radio where you can pause and record live radio. Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Just leave a 30-word comment on this post by June 29 to get an entry for a drawing.

It’s Poewar’s John Hewitt‘s fault again (I promise I am not brown nosing him or nuthin’). He introduced me to Yvonne Russell through his March Madness thing, which you should what it is by now as I’ve mentioned it too many times during this birthday celebration. Now you can see why I credit John with renewing my interest in blogging. A gal gets tired after eight years, y’know?

Enough about him! This should be about Yvonne. Her blog entries always spark wonderful discussions. Writers can’t complain about loneliness when they have blogs like hers for their water cooler visits. I know I do.

The Power of Story in the Digital Age

What is your story? Your personal story? Your business story?

Now that we have push button publishing, our personal and business stories are no longer confined to oral storytelling, wonderful though that medium is – or to faded photos in a box. We have the means to gather and share those stories – the stories of our families, our hopes, our businesses and our everyday lives. They can be captured like time capsules… a web of ever changing snapshots preserved forever.

They spin around the ethernet, ready to be plucked off the virtual shelf by an interested passerby or a friend. It’s a pretty empowering thought that our stories and the stories of others in this digital age are ready and waiting like a virtual treasure chest of event markers, memories and perspectives for our children or grandchildren and beyond.

We can add color, nuances and an extra dimension of connectivity through words – spoken and written. We can add photos, video, audio and lifestreams. In an inspiring video, Jonathan Harris talks of looking up at the night sky and remembering the ancient Greek stories of the constellations. He ponders what the constellations would look like if we could remake our own modern day versions today. And what would their stories be?

Harris is working on two exciting projects. We Feel Fine maps the world’s emotions. Every day computers scan up to 20 000 sentences using the word “feel”. Never mind six degrees of separation. This is a sense of one to one connectivity. Universe maps world events and people – again a very powerful demonstration of the interactivity and essence of story. Everyone has a story and everyone’s story impacts on the world’s storyweb.

I’m excited to see what the future holds in providing new ways to share our personal and business stories. Recently, while travelling in outback Australia, I met a bookseller who had clients all around the world thanks to the wonders of the internet. She not only had clients, but these clients had become friends. She remarked “Aren’t we lucky to be living at a time like this?” I readily agreed.

About the Author: Yvonne Russell is a freelance writer, editor and professional blogger. She blogs at Home Biz Notes, YouCanSubmit, and Small Biz Mentor. Her personal blog is Grow Your Writing Business.

We have our first winners in this whole 8th blog birthday shebang in our first drawing for two copies of Magic Farm. The winners posted comments in 7 Things You Must Know Before Moving Your Blog. Random.org did the hard work in drawing the numbers.

eDrum roll, please…

<eDrum rolls>

Yuwanda Black

Ecommerce Newsletter

Congrats, you two! I will send you an email with the details.

Wow. I’m eight. Old enough to be …

• In second grade.
• 56-years old in dog years.
• An octagon.
• A sphenic number.
• 1000 in binary code.
• The atomic number of oxygen.
• The second magic number in physics.
• “Strength” in a tarot card.
• Lucky in Asian culture.
• An octave.
• A byte (eight bits make a byte).
• The number furlongs in a mile (eight furlongs = one mile).
• Number of kids in Eight Is Enough.
• The number of men out.
• The number of people in The Brady Bunch family.
• The time required for rodeo cowboys to stay on a bull to receive scores. 8 Seconds. Meryl grew up in Fort Worth — like I am going to skip a rodeo fact.

The guest bloggers have submitted some great stuff. Their entries will start appearing tomorrow.

$5000 jump out of a plane challenge. If we had raised $5000 by today, Meryl would’ve had to jump out of a plane. Fell short by one c-note ($100)! I did a lousy job telling the world about my birthday. Typically, Meryl would say it was close enough and just do it. But seriously, this girl is scared of jumping out of a plane.

Not gonna be sad I couldn’t add a little excitement to my birthday celebration. It’s supposed to be a happy occasion.

So get ready to win some prizes! Oh, if you still want to contribute a guest post — it’s not too late. Just let me know. Meryl said I could use her contact form as I don’t have my own physical inbox.