As if all the glamour, fame, and good juju that comes with volunteering for the Overnight Website Challenge isn’t enough, there are prizes! Each volunteer gets a chance to go in the Cash Vault to grab slips and enter a raffle for these awesome prizes.
The Empire Strikes Package
Did you know ThinkGeek’s Tauntaun sleeping bag started out as an April Fools’ joke? Well, it did. But when nerds throughout the galaxy laid eyes on that beauty the sheer force of their desire to own such a thing their demand turned the joke into a real thing. This soft, cuddly, and entrail-y sleeping bag is part of our Empire Strikes Package along with an Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber, and a Yoda backpack. May the Force be with you.
Apple iPad: Seriously, do we need to say a lot about this? We pre-ordered the “magical and revolutionary product” (those are Apple’s words and sometimes the hyperbole is hard to resist) and one lucky winner will get to be the first kid on the block with one.
Two Rock Out Packages (one medium and one large)
Is the only time you turn it down when you’re sleeping it off? Then you totally need an Electronic Rock Guitar T-shirt and an Electronic Drum Kit shirt. This way you can shred a face melter or kick out some jams no matter where you are. If you grow tired of the relentless groupies and then endless calls for an encore, you can take your show home and chill out with a little Lego Rock Band.
Design Nerd Package
Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale, is the preeminent thinker on information design. Just think of what a smarty pants you’ll be when you get your hands on a set of his books including: Beautiful Evidence, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations. Don’t you feel smarter already?
Bacon Lovers Package
Mmmm, bacon. If your mouth waters at the mere mention of this magnificent, magical meat then you’re going to want this prize package! You’ll never have to travel far without a little reminder of your favorite food. This package includes: tactical Bacon, an air freshener, a wallet, lip balm, salt, pop corn, band-aids, soap, and of course, Bacon: A Love Story. Yum!
Hardware Hacker Package
Just imagine the wondrous things you can create with this hacker package. If you win this, you’ll get years three, four, and five of MAKE, the quarterly magazine that brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. These three anthologies include ideas on how to make a Telekinetic Pen, something called a brain machine, and a solar xylophone. And with the help of the DIY Electronics kit and the Hacktronics starter kit, you might just dream up your own million-dollar idea. We can’t wait to see what you create!
Drobo: Are you one of those people who are really good at remembering to backup their computer? If so Drobo will make your good habits even easier. If you’re not, then it looks like Drobo will make your life a lot easier. Drobo uses revolutionary BeyondRAID storage technology that protects data against a hard disk crash and is simple enough for anyone to use. The website says as long as you have more than a single disk in Drobo, all your data is safe no matter which hard disk fails. There’s no need to worry about anything else.
Rovio
Long ago The Jetson’s proved that a home with a robot is a happy home. If you win the drawing for this prize your home will be totally happy! Rovio is a robotic mobile webcam with a microphone and speakers. Rovio connects to WiFi and allows you to stream video and audio to a web browser anywhere in the world. It works with Mac, PC, iPhones, and PS3s. You can drive the bot around the house, take pictures of the family and e-mail them to friends. All this can be done from thousands of miles away.
Luminodot: Gawker called this a Lite Brite HD for big kids and said, “the Luminodot packs a super-dense 70×50 grid, which accommodates 3,500 light pegs on a slick HDTV-looking frame.” How cool is that? And the best part about it, your mom (probably) won’t be yelling at you not to get those little pegs stuck in the carpet because they might break the vacuum.
Lego Package: We have it on good authority that the only thing cooler than a robot is a Lego robot that you build yourself. Oh yeah, that’s right. This prize includes the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 a robot you make and then upload commands to using USB. And because we know you don’t want your little Lego buddy to be lonely, we’re throwing in a Lego t-shirt for those days when you want to look like a Lego robot yourself (or, you know, just show off your awesome Lego creation).
A New Nerd wardrobe
What is better than putting off doing the laundry for another week? Spending that laundry-free week in Threadless t-shirts. That’s right, if you win this $125 Threadless gift certificate you can put off doing laundry for another week and look totally hot while doing it.
Mystery Package
We’d tell you more about this package, but then we’d have to kill you. You’ll just have to trust us abou the awesomeness. Judging by the rest of this list, you know it’s going to be fantastic. We promise you’ll never want to give this up.
30″ LCD Monitor: We all secretly judge other nerds by the size of their monitors. You can deny it all you want, we all know. If you win this 30″ LCD Monitor from HP and you’ll be the biggest, baddest nerd on the block. Just imagine how impressed everyone will be at next year’s Overnight Website Challenge when you’re the guy/girl pulling out the 30″ monitor. You’ll make them swoon. Really.
Chuck Norris Package
It’s a little known fact that Chuck Norris runs Windows Vista on his Etch-a-Sketch. Also, when you say “no one’s perfect” Chuck Norris takes this as a personal insult. If this information comes as no surprise to you, you’re totally going to dig this prize that includes: a 2010 Chuck Norris calendar, Chuck Norris T-shirt, The Truth About Chuck Norris, The Chuck Norris Collection DVD, and the Chuck Norris Facts poster.
Magnets!
Much like Slinky Buckyballs magnets are the kind of toy you never think of playing with until someone else has it in their hands. If you win this prize you’ll have your very own set of Buckyballs to play with whenever you want! Plus you can have the best decked out refrigerator (or other magnetic surface) with LOL Magnetz, Periodic Table Magnets, and Photoshop Magnets.
Three Wolf Lifestyle Package
Have you been known to bark at the moon? Are you firmly in the Team Jacob camp? Do you just enjoy the majestic beauty of the wolf? Or are you just a fine purveyor of nerd culture. No matter how you answer you’ll enjoy this package that pays homage to three wolf moon with a journal, watch, blanket, and laptop skin featuring that famous design.
Retro Gaming Package
Sometimes it’s fun to harken back to the days of yesteryear when video games were new and simple. Win the retro gaming package and you can harken back whenever you want. The Retro Mini NES Handheld system includes two wireless remotes, and the classic NES Zapper so you can plug it into your TV and get some 8-bit Duck Hunt action the old-fashioned way. This package also includes some Space Invader wall decals to use on your favorite walls.
SpaceWarp 10000
This looks like Legos on meth, and the copy from the website that was surely translated into English by someone whose first language is not English is irresistible, “SpaceWarp is a microcosm that you can create in your own space. It goes fast, and slowly right before your eyes. While you are laying the rails, it will remind you of your glorious childhood and the bright eyes you used to have. The goal waiting for you is filled with the great sense of fulfillment, and it will heal you over the fatigue from your daily lives. It’s all up to you.” Admit it, you want it.
Nerd Chic Package
For the nerd girl has everything this package will be right up your alley — shoes, bags, and jewelry. How fun is this? It includes a Space Invaders pendant, a ring kit, magnet jewelry, a cassette tote bag, and $150 Zappos gift certificate.
Flashbelt Tickets
That’s right, you can win tickets to be front and center at Flashbelt 2010. The mission of Flashbelt is to bring together new media designers, developers and enthusiasts to share knowledge, inspiration and build community. It’s about professional development and creative inspiration. Our nerds had a blast last year, and we’re you will too.
Nintendo DSI Package: A Nintendo DSI plus Brain Age plus Scribblenauts. Sure it looks like we’re catering to the gamer (again) with this package but we’re not. No, this is for the people who want to keep their brain young and flexible. Really, it is.
Remote Control Mayhem
Remote control toys are fun. Remote control battle tanks with real fire power are fun to the Nth power. This tank lets you load up to 40 pieces of ammo into the tank at once, shoot ammo in singles or in quick succession (1 per second), and can fire while on the move! And because you’d never fight a battle solely on land there’s two remote control helicopters included in this package. When you win, will you let us play too?
Flex Builder 3: Adobe Flex Builder 3 is a highly productive Eclipse based development tool enabling intelligent coding, interactive step-through debugging, and visual design of the user interface layout, appearance, and behavior of rich Internet applications — who wouldn’t want that?
