Winners of Google Wordmaster Contest declared

Winners of The Google Wordmasters Challenge 2006 were declared through a Press Release on 9th November. First prize goes to Vamsi Krishna Nakkina, from Hyderabad. Great Going Vamsi !! Congratulations Vamsi!!

Here’s the list of the Top Ten Finalists:
Rank, Name of winner & City from which contested as follows;

1 Vamsi Krishna Nakkina from Hyderabad

2 Karunguzhi Nalini from Bangalore

3 Amrita Singh from Delhi

4 Shriganesh Joshi from Mumbai

5 Shyamalima Sengupta from Bangalore

6 Ravi Rao from Mumbai

7 Tulika Srimal from Hyderabad

8 Debdutta Saha from Hyderabad

9 Terence Tuhinanshu from Indore

10 Geeta Ganapathy from Bangalore

First prize winner Vamsi gets Rs 1,00,000/- as Cash Prize.

Second Prize winner Karunguzhi gets Rs 75,000/- as Cash Prize.

Third Prize winner Amrita gets Rs 50,000/- as Cash Prize.

Vamsi also gets a Course in creative writing from a Top University abroad…WoW !!

Director Online Sales and Operations, Google India, Roy Gilbert said that “Wordmasters 2006 was a platform to identify and celebrate India’s top English writing talent and we are thrilled with both the response and the quality of talent we have seen. At Google, our users, customers and partners expect high quality communication and we hope that such contests will provide further opportunities to attract strong writing talent to Google.”

For those who are wondering as to what this is all about, well, The Google Wordmasters Challenge 2006 was conducted simultaneously in 10 cities across India, these cities were Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kochi & Indore. My earlier post on it was covered on 30th September here.

The Press Release is here

Gtalk on Orkut

Now you can chat with all your Orkut friends on Gtalk.

Goto ‘Settings’ tab & click on Enable.
It would be wise to Select the 2nd option: Let me choose which Orkut friends to include.

My Take:

1) If your profile pic has a preety face, then be prepared to get lot of chat requests.

2) I forsee/predict, that many profiles which have preety faces & pics, would have to remove those pics, because they will constantly bombarded with chat requests. In a way that is good [ guess how?]

3) Sales of headsets [mics & speakers] would shoot up !!

4) Cyber Cafes which have those privacy partitions would thrive more.

For newbies…duh… Orkut is a social networking website, founded by a Google employee & Gtalk = Google Talk Messenger [IM]. Google has now integrated Gtalk with Orkut, so that Orkut members can talk [chat with voice calls] with their friends using Gtalk…phew.

In the Future….. G Ads & G Radio Audio ads to be served @ start or end of calls?? based on user profile or content/topic of conversation? or ambient sound?

Google Wordmasters Results

Winners of the

Google Wordmasters Challenge 2006 must have been contacted by now.

*Edited on 9th Nov* the results have been declared, you read the post on the winners of this contest here:Winners of Google Wordmaster Contest declared

3 winners out of the approx. 3000 participants were to be declared. On several blogs, I have been reading about the anxiety of those who had participated but yet are not aware of the results.

From the Terms & Conditions:Winner Selection and Notification: The winners will be selected from among all eligible entries by a judges’ panel chosen by Sponsor. The judges will review all entries and determine the winners in their discretion. The decision of the judges is final. The winners will be announced on or about 30/10/2006. Winners will be notified within about seven (7) days after announcement date via phone, email, post or overnight courier.

It is preety clear > The winners would be contacted, that’s it. End of story. I don’t understand as to why there is a

hue & cry among several participants for not being informed of the winners. Case of sour grapes, perhaps.
The winner/s may not be a blogger & even if he/she is, he may not want to disclose that he has won. Simple.
Possibly that the winner is away on Diwali Vacation & therefore has not read his email? Is this the first contest or compeition that several bloggers have participated in? Look around, there are so many contest for Slogans, Quotes, Photo contests, etc, do they inform all the thousands of participants that they have not been selected?

So, relax…..chill, you participated, that is more important.

Oh Yes, chances are that participants may receive Google Gifts? These guys sure do get:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum81/4124.htm

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/11042.htm

BTW, Yes, I participated too:)