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Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a journalist who lives in Glasgow, Scotland. There are 1308 posts in the archives. You can subscribe to a feed. This post was made on and belongs in the web category. The previous post was , and the next post is .

Gmail Invitation Giveaway!

You’ve probably read about Google’s new email service, Gmail.

It’s a rather fabulous webmail service, with an innovative search-based interface, a whopping 1GB of storage space for all your pictures of cute kittens and stuff, and spam filters that actually work.

At the moment, it’s an invite-only deal, while Google beta test the service.

Enterprising types are selling invitations on Ebay, civic-minded folk are offering invitations in return for acts of generosity and kindness, and, erm, quizzy people are setting quizzes with invitations as prizes.

I have three invitations spare, so, being a mildly civic-minded, fairly quizzy sort of a person, I thought I’d offer them up in return for a small donation to charity, with an exciting Prince-themed quiz element, just for fun.

The Quiz

Leave the answers to the following three questions in the comments to this post. The first three correct entries will receive Gmail invitations once they have made a donation.

  1. Name any one of Prince’s alter egos or pseudonyms, as featured on his albums (not including the ‘squiggle’ glyph he adopted, or the TAFKAP acronym).
  2. Name three artists who have released cover versions of songs written by Prince.
  3. Name the three Prince songs from which these lyrics are taken:
    1. Look out all U hippies, U ain’t as sharp as me
      It ain’t about the trippin’, but the sexuality
    2. I’m not a human
      I am a dove
    3. I said now, overcast days never turned me on
      But something about the clouds and her mixed

Even if you know nothing about Prince, these should be easy enough to answer with a spot of judicious web searching.

The Donation

If you’re one of the first three to answer all of the above questions correctly, to receive one of my invitations, you must also make a donation to Amnesty International. You can do that by clicking this link.

Donate as much or as little as you like, then send me an email with a screenshot of the last page of the donation process attached, or forward your confirmation email. If you don’t have a credit or debit card, or are genuinely skint, let me know and we’ll work out an alternative form of donation.

Special Bonus Prize

If you answer the quiz questions and make a donation to Amnesty International of £50/$90/€75 or more, I’ll throw in an invitation to Orkut, the Google-affiliated social networking site where all the geeks cool kids hang out.

Assuming any readers are actually after a Gmail account: Good luck!

Update: two correct sets of answers have been received, and removed from the comments in the interests of fairness. Which means there’s only one invitation left - be quick! I’ll contact all three winners as soon as there is a third set of correct answers.

Update 2: And we have three winners! The competition is now closed. If I get any more invites, I’ll run a new quiz, in the meantime, folk after Gmail invites should take a look at Gmail Swap.

Update 3: And I have five more Gmail invitations up for grabs

Posted at 2pm on 12/06/04 by Jack Mottram to the web category.
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  1. [correct answers removed in the interests of fairness]

    Posted by tickle at 2pm on 13.06.04

  2. [correct answers removed in the interests of fairness]

    Posted by Rune at 5am on 14.06.04

  3. I have an account so I’m just entering for the fun!
    1 . Alexander Nevermind
    2. Haywoode ( a stock aitken and waterman flunky! - I Wanna be your lover with awful synth-guitar playing), Hefner - Controversy, Flying Pickets - Purple Rain.
    3. not sure about these but - Sexuality, I would die 4 u, raspberry beret.

    Posted by Luke at 1pm on 14.06.04

  4. Ooh - close Luke. One of your songs is wrong. I’ll leave the answers up to give the next person a more-than-sporting chance…

    (And I’ll be wandering off to see if the Haywoode track is on any of the P2P networks now…)

    Posted by Jack at 5pm on 14.06.04

  5. It’s kind of amusing that Luke here already has a GMail account and is trying for another. Kudos.

    Posted by Gary Fleming at 8pm on 14.06.04

  6. Would love a Gmail account.

    1) Jamie Starr
    2) Tori Amos (Purple Rain), Jesus and Mary Chain (Alphabet Street), PM Dawn (1999)
    3) a)All The Critics Love U In New York
    b)I Would Die 4 U
    c)Raspberry Beret

    More than happy to give to Amnesty, given that I’ve been a member since 1987…

    Posted by Adam at 1pm on 15.06.04

  7. Competition closed!

    I’ll email the three winners right away…

    Posted by Jack at 1pm on 15.06.04

  8. aw- I was close. I keep posting my gmail address everywhere to see if the spam crawlers will pick up on it, but as yet nothing’s got through!

    • as soon as they add WAP access to gmail I will end up forwarding all my accounts to it.

    I wonder how much Prince is available on the iTunes service? Surely there would need to be a giant server somewhere, solely devoted to the prolific purple person’s output.

    Posted by Luke at 1pm on 15.06.04

  9. hmm this contest aint a bad idea, but i am inviting the first two people to send me a request :)
    cheers

    Posted by viyani at 5pm on 18.06.04

  10. I would like and am very interessed to have an account in Gmail

    Posted by AHOUMA at 5pm on 25.06.04

  11. ^I pity you^

    I admit I was initially excited by GMail, but as I began surfing for a way to get it I quickly disillusioned. It won’t be anything special for long. Yahoo has already challenged GMail’s 1GB storage capacity, and will likely match it when GMail is made public. Chill out, you will get the gigabyte you think you need. Nor are those that haven’t been invited missing out on any of the good names—there aren’t any. They must be at least 6 characters long (sorry God, you have to settle for Jehovah@gmail.com). Is free email account really worth your tears? Wipe your eyes, put on your shoes and revel in the slendor of nature!

    Posted by Nik Gav at 6am on 26.06.04

  12. I want an invitations to submit in gmail

    Posted by sahar at 7am on 04.07.04

  13. Do you live in this world…I stumbled on the page while searching for a Gmail invite…but the conditions posted here left me wondering if the person who wrote this does have any social life atall ?

    Posted by el at 8am on 10.07.04

  14. My social life’s just fine, thanks, but my humblest apologies for offending you by raising money for charity with spare Gmail invites - glad you could take the time out of your busy schedule to make a bitchy comment on my weblog!

    Posted by Jack at 9am on 10.07.04

  15. I apologize for my comments made earlier…I was not offended by the fund raising activity but the quiz…
    Really dont know why but hey everybody makes a mistake but only few can accept it and sincerely apologize.
    After reading further I was really impressed at the collection made by you.
    Please if possible let me take back my words,
    Regards,

    Posted by el at 9am on 10.07.04

  16. No probs - the quiz is, admittedly, a bit sad (though you should have seen the questions rejected as too hard!)

    Posted by Jack at 1pm on 13.07.04

  17. ppppllllllllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasssssssseeeeeeeeeee send me a invitation

    Posted by varun at 9am on 07.07.06

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