by , 5:30 PM EST, November 14th, 2003

A letter from the new director of promotions and propaganda:

Friends, Romans, Mac users, lend me your ears! (he means eyes) Four score and seven minutes ago, our editor bestowed upon me the great honor of bestowing upon you, valuable prizes for bestowing upon us, your artistic talents. Let's just be happy saying there's about to be a whole lot of bestowing goin' on.

With great flourish and a puff of smoke curling from his ears, TMO's Editor-in-Chief, Bryan Chaffin, jumped from the elevator on the top floor of TMO Towers� and yelled, "Why don't we have monthly contests with totally radical, bodacious (he's from California) prizes?!?!?" At that point he fired Perkins for not having thought of it sooner. This is despite the fact that nobody named "Perkins" works for TMO, but I digress.

Since Perkins won't be around to do it, I'll be announcing the monthly contests and filling you in on the prizes that I'm able to wrestle away from the TMO staffers. Needless to say, I won't be making many friends around the office so I'll need as many of you to enter as possible. (Will you be my friend?) So without further ado, whatever that means, here's the first contest!

Contest #1: The Ideal Panther Desktop Image
We're starting out with a real softball. All you need to do is create your ideal desktop with a Panther theme. This contest is being sponsored by Dr. Bott, FirewireDirect, and Griffin Technologies.

Rules:

Submissions are due by December 15, winners will be announced December 31st

Submit your entries as a single compressed folder (zip or stuffit) to [email protected]. Include your name, phone number, e-mail address and mailing address in the e-mail.

You must provide desktops in the following sizes: 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1440x900, 1280x1024, 1280x854, 1024x768.

The unaltered TMO logo may be integrated. (logo available for download).

You can not use any third party copyrighted material in your design.

Please include a description of how you made it, software, art sources, techniques, etc. You can even include your hardware specs.

Staff members and employees of The Mac Observer and BackBeat Media can submit desktop images, but are not eligible for prizes. TMO forum moderators are eligible for prizes.

TMO reserves the right to reject or accept any submission for any reason.

Grand Prize Bundle
	El Gato's EyeTV / Remote Wonder Bundle Find all the TV shows you want to see and watch them whenever you want. Pause live television. Skip commercials. And do it all from the other side of the room. With the EyeTV/Remote Wonder bundle, you've got all you need to turn your Mac into the ultimate multimedia station. - Retail Price: US$214.95 (Note that the EyeTV is NTSC only)
	FirewireDirect's Spark 800 FireWire 800 2.5" hard drive enclosure Interface: Two FireWire 800; One USB 2.0; Industry leading Oxford 922 FireWire/USB bridge Form Factor: 2.5" portable chassis, only a half inch thick and not much bigger than a deck of cards. Retail Price: US$139.95
	FireWire 800 1394b PCI Host Adapter [Windows/Mac] Two FireWire 800 ports, plus one FireWire 400 port Throughput up to 800 Mbps Backwards compatibility with FireWire "A" (the original FireWire) Retail Price: US$79.95
	TMO Shirt TMO's newest shirt, inspired by The Matrix. It's a cool shirt, and you will be eligible to win a TMO mug just by sending us a picture of you wearing your shirt someplace cool! - Retail Price: US$16.95
Total Grand Prize Value: US$451.80!

Everyone with a submission accepted in the contest will be eligible for a Random Drawing prize!

Random Drawing Prize
	PowerMate is the coolest volume knob your computer has ever seen � and so much more. Use it to edit home movies or scroll through long documents and web pages. Best of all, PowerMate is an assignable controller. Program it to do anything you want in any application. Customize it to your own needs and get wild. - Retail Price: US$39.99
	TMO's newest shirt, inspired by The Matrix. - Retail Price: US$16.95
Total Prize Package: US$56.94!

So, work up your best Panther ideas, and submit those desktop images!

-Daniel Miller
TMO director of promotions and propaganda

Fine Print (The evil lawyer stuff):

1. All submissions must be sent to [email protected]. Submissions sent to any other address are not valid.
2. Submissions must be received between 12:00am EST on November 15, 2003 and 12:00am EST on December 15, 2003. Anything received outside of these dates is not considered valid.
3. No purchase is required to enter, and contestants may enter as may times as they wish.
4. Rules subject to change without prior notice.
5. The Mac Observer, Inc. reserves the right to review all contest entries for use at its discretion without compensation to contestants. By sending your contest entries, you have agreed to have them posted to our Web site and/or reproduced in any materials of our choosing, without attribution.