$200 Cheque from Sprout – Ten Minutes of Work

Spiffy Owl — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:13:09 +0000

Have facebook? Then you’ll want to jump at this chance to win $200. I did, and won, and got the cheque in the mail this morning!

This contest is running every week until December 21st, and unfortunately for the company (and fortunately for you!) there is almost no interest in this contest. Zip. Nada. Zero. None. The week where I entered, I was only competing against one other person. The odds of winning are pretty freakin’ good.

Here’s what you need to do: head on over to the Sprout website and download their program. I checked it over and it looks clean from any viruses or trojans. Once you’ve signed up, start using the Sprout reader – basically what you need to do is find really WEIRD news stories. Once you have something good, click the Show Location button at the bottom, and copy the URL and headline of the article.

Then, simply log on to facebook, and post both in this discussion board. You can enter as many times as you want so keep on surfing until you find something juicy! The contest closes every Sunday at 9:00pm. As of this week, I only see one person entering! Good luck!

Here are a couple of quick thoughts about Sprout. Sadly, despite their (failing) contest efforts, I really despise their program. Clicking the ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ leaves is supposed to help narrow down the types of stories that you enjoy reading, however it’s riddled with bugs and frequently gives me stories that I’ve ‘sad-leafed’ over and over again. Many of the pages it spits out aren’t even news stories, or in other languages. And most of the news stories it spits out aren’t interesting or weird or funny. When your program can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to do well – WELL – take it back to the drawing board!

Perhaps its most heinous crime is hijacking my choice of web browser. That’s right, Sprout is a stand-alone program, with it’s own built-in browser. One that is painstakingly slow, and frankly, kind of ugly. I see what Sprout was trying to do here, but they should take a leaf (hah!) from StumbleUpon. Don’t develop a stand-alone program, try a Firefox extension, a toolbar, something that lets the user control their browser when surfing the net.

I’ve won Sprout’s contest but that’s not enough to sway me to use a flawed program. I’ve uninstalled it this morning, but wish Sprout the best of luck in developing something that works!Similar Posts:

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$200 Cheque from Sprout – Ten Minutes of Work