Earlier this week Microsoft's Australian branch launched a controversial campaign to attract new users to it's recently launched Internet Explorer 8 browser.  It basically involves an online treasure hunt for $10 000 AUS, conducted via Twitter, the catch being that you needed to be using IE8 in order to be able to uncover the prize. The clues are released either daily or twice daily, there's no indication as to when they will stop however the competition closes on September 15 so I suspect it will be a few weeks before this date.

After much derision for employing  such underhand tactics (in the online world at least) they decided to open the competition to people using all browsers - Microsoft Head Office apparently forced the Aussies to change it and were not impressed with the competition idea in the slightest. Nonetheless, it is going ahead and the first few clues have now been released.  Although you need to be an Australian resident to win, it has gained interest all over the world. Mostly down to the negative publicity I suspect.
 
In any case, I've been following the first few clues and trying to solve them has added a bit of mind stimulation to lunch hour.

If you'd like to have a go visit the competition Twitter page http://www.twitter.com/tengrand_IE8
 


Comments

Iain Hamilton

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:15:00

I thought the Firefox version was pretty funny: http://tengrandisburiedthere.com/. Where was the ten grand eventually buried?

 

admin

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:24:37

Yeh we spotted that, good on the Firefox engineer who put that together as I think that got as much publicity as the competition itself.

The 'treasure' was buried at http://www.fastsafeprivatebetter.com which then required a password of 'courval' to be entered. Don't ask me to explain how, they really drew it out.

 



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