group writing project | Semantically driven

Sony Ericsson C902 phone giveaway

October 21, 2008 by Jen

Sony Ericsson C902 phone A couple of months ago I received the phone from Sony Ericsson, like the picture to the left, to try out and review if I so wished.

I’ve now done this and I’m going to give it away. I’m locked into a contract with my current phone and it doesn’t seem worth having another phone sitting around doing nothing.

What you need to do to win it:

Write about why you would like to win it on your blog. It doesn’t have to be a long entry. Make it funny, add pictures. Do what you like, so long as it conveys why you want this phone.
Link to my blog – http://semanticallydriven.com within your entry.
Leave a comment on this post so I know that you’ve entered.
Do this by the witching hour on Friday 31 October (midnight on 31 October incase I’m muddled about what the witching hour is).

What would be nice for you to do:

One of the conditions for me keeping it was to donate money to a charity – ‘Clean Up Australia‘ has been nominated. I’m still going to do this and if you win and feel so inclined to donate then that would be great. Even if you don’t win and feel so inclined to donate that would be great.

Disclaimers and further information:

It doesn’t have a SIM card. You’ll need to supply your own.
It’s not locked to any particular Australian phone network.
For people outside Australia, it might not work with mobile phone providers so this is only open to Australian readers.

What you get

You might win the phone but even if you don’t I will post links to all the bloggers that participated during the next couple of weeks and at the end.

For even more information about the phone – read these reviews from Neerav, John Lampard, Lee, Ben and Greg.

Good luck.

Killer titles

September 3, 2008 by Jen

Last week I participated in Problogger’s killer title group writing project. Participating in things like this gets me thinking outside the square a bit with content and also enables me to find some other blogs I might otherwise not have encountered.

I was pretty quick off the mark with getting my post up as it was one I’d been thinking about anyway. It was the Twitter and Plurk get Pinged post.

As Problogger is so popular there is no way I was able to get to all of the posts so the ones I’m linking to were posted on the first day of the project. Being one of the first certainly momentarily boosted my traffic and it was fun to do.

These four posts are the ones I found from that first day that caught my eye:

Would you go to a robot for migraine relief? – quite frankly if something was going to help me with migraine relief I’d give it a go. Who cares if it’s a robot? That’s why this title caught my eye and I wondered how the heck a robot could possibly help my migraine.
Don’t make me smack you right here on the elevator – As a parent I could relate to this. It wasn’t quite the story I was expecting, but it was entertaining nonetheless and I spent a bit of time on her blog.
Two creative ways to solve the mystery of writer’s block – Anyone who writes suffers from writer’s block and using Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Morse to get the point across was quite interesting as well.
Passion for hire – the title grabbed me so I clicked over and the post got me as well.

Other thoughts about this group writing project:

Read the rules. If you’re asked to submit a new post do so. Don’t submit an old one. That’s not getting into the spirit, or am I too much of a rules police?
If you’re asked to link directly to the post you’re talking about then do so. Don’t link to the main page of your website. I haven’t got the time to scroll down and find what you’ve posted one week after the project’s finished.
On a more personal note, for a killer titles project I’m not really interested in a how to do this or how to do that type title. Try to think a bit more creatively to capture that attention as that was the whole point of the exercise.

Savouring the season(s)

April 2, 2008 by Jen

It’s autumn here (or fall for you northern hemisphere habitants). This time three weeks ago it was nearing the end of a two and a half week heatwave. A heatwave is apparently a period of days where it’s over 35 degrees celsius and the temperature cit certainly reached that, and more. The only thing that kept me going (and others I’m sure) was the fact that it had to be over one day. It is hard to imagine the weather outside being cool though when you go outside all you think about is how hot it is.

One night I lay on the couch, the fan going overhead, the windows wide open wishing for a whisper of a breeze to blow out some of the hot air and realised that I was getting used to it being really warm at night. On these nights I would have liked to have a mosquito net to sleep outside on the trampoline because it was cooler than sleeping inside. I don’t have central cooling so fans and cool showers were my method of keeping cool. I also live in a house that’s over 100 years old therefore it keeps cooler than many modern houses. If I lived in a more modern house I would probably need air conditioning to cope.

I also wondered what people did before electricity when fans weren’t an option, let alone air conditioning. I couldn’t imagine trying to sleep without a breeze, even a warm breeze. I guess they just had to get used to it.

It was in the back of my mind that once our heatwave was over, autumn would be here with the darker evenings, the crisp feel in the air and memories of hot days when swimming in the ocean was a real pleasure and maybe some rain – please some rain.

I’m glad I live in a place where there are definite seasons, and I appreciate these seasons more as time goes on. I look forward to winter so I can light the fire and have cosy warm nights. I love the summer because it means swimming, and autumn and spring are great respites from summer and winter. It also means that the things I don’t like about the four seasons will always change pretty soon.

This is my entry for the Mammablogga group writing project.