The Google Code-in is one of the newest contests presented by Google’s Open Source Program. For students who have wanted to get involved with open source, this is a tremendous opportunity to dive in and give it a shot.

Google will team up with a variety of open source organizations to come up with a list of tasks to be performed by contest contestants. Who is eligible, you ask? Any students between the ages of 13 to 18 before the start of the contest are free to participate.

Google isn’t shorting their participants in the incentive department, either. Contestants who successfully complete one task will receive a t-shirt and a certificate. But it gets bigger: For those who complete three tasks, they will receive $100. For every three tasks after the first three, contestants will receive an additional $100, up to a total of $500 for 15 successfully completed tasks.

10 lucky grand prize winners will receive a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, where their accomplishments will be rewarded with an awards ceremony.

The contest is slated to start on November 22, 2010. You can find additional information on the contest at the Google Code-in website.

The Google Code-in looks like a tremendous opportunity for young students to explore, learn and potentially develop a strong interest in programming. It will provide students with a great opportunity to network and work alongside some impressive leaders in the computer programming field.

What are your thoughts on Google’s contest?

(Photo Credit: Google)

On October 21st, marketing strategists, communications managers, bloggers and journalists will come together to learn about the latest trends and techniques in monitoring social media. This fully-interactive conference will include presentations, case studies, Q&A sessions and panel discussions.

The 1-day conference will be followed by a half-day Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp on October 22nd. This intensive series of workshops will be the ultimate ‘how-to’ event for companies and organizations looking to measure the effects of their interactions in the social web.

Confirmed Presenters Include:

• Luke Brynley-Jones - Social Media Consultant, Influence People
• Murray Newlands – Blogger & Social Media Consultant, Influence People
• Giles Palmer – Founder & CEO Brandwatch
• Mark Schmulen – General Manager, Social Media, Constant Contact
• Marcel LeBrun – CEO, Radian6

Topics to be covered include:

• Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services
• Brand and Reputation Management
• Sentiment Detection and Analysis
• Data Quality and Filtering
• Identifying and Connecting with Influencers
• Beyond Listening: Measurement and ROI
• The Future of Social Media Monitoring
• Case studies and Best Practice

Contest: Two lucky Bubblicious readers will get access to the conference for free. Simply submit a comment below with your #1 question or concern with social media monitoring.

Discount: Bubblicious readers can register right now with a 10% discount using the code “bub10”.

Good luck!

Win tickets for two to see CATFISH
Thursday, September 2
7:30 PM at AMC Metreon in San Francisco, CA
Special screening event featuring Q&A with directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost and star Nev Shulman

Email your full name to sfmoviebuzz@yahoo.com with KRYSTYL in the subject line to receive a pass.

CATFISH
In Select Theaters September 17
www.iamrogue.com/catfish

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel’s brother, Nev. They had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives. A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, CATFISH is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.

Please note: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. ARRIVE EARLY. This pass is the property of Universal Pictures, which reserves the right to admit, revoke admission or refuse access to the theater at the discretion of an authorized representative. Seats are not guaranteed, and are limited on a first-come first-served basis. EXCEPT FOR MEMBERS OF THE REVIEWING PRESS. NO ADMITTANCE ONCE SCREEN HAS BEGUN. This theater is not responsible for seating over capacity. This ticket is not for resale.

I am an advocate of solar power – but the biggest advocate? I don’t think I’d fit that bill, but maybe you do!

The new ‘Power the House’ campaign just launched to find the most devoted advocates of solar power and have them help get solar panels back on the White House. Using the many facets of social media, the Power the House campaign encourages the public to check their social-media-linked site to get their daily action plan and participate in a game that spreads the solar word.

Once completing solar missions around the social-sphere on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Foursquare, players can earn points and win GLOMANA merchandise, like a glow-in the-dark t-shirt.  If you’re really into the idea and campaign, earning enough points to become the ‘Ultimate Solar Advocate’ will score you placement in a nation-wide press release when the campaign reaches 10,000 petition signatures!

The lead company driving the campaign, Sungevity, sent a request to the Obama administration to accept their offer of a free solar power system and launched their site to encourage the public to join in with them.  Looks like there are some participants and I hope it succeeds to reach their petition goal soon!

The Web 2.0 Expo Hall features over 75 exhibits, a Non-Profit Pavilion, a Long Tail Pavilion and The Solutions Showcase Theater that will have 10 minute presentations from the sponsors and exhibitors. I walked, talked and took pictures of  folks on the floor. There is tons of FREE schwag from branded cups, T-shirts and cups to incredible give-aways such as photo & video shoots, iPAD’s and even cash prizes of up to $10,000!

iStockphoto Photoshoot

iStockPhoto offers royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash files through advanced search. They also pay out royalties to artists. They are offering free portraits from the photographer Tyler Stallman available for viewing here. They will be presenting on Wednesday at 2:35 pm in room 2016 to share lessons learned in the image industry.

Lights, camera action! You can win up to $10,000 by entering the contest How do YOU.com,  sponsored by VeriSign.  You will be videotaped for up to 2 minutes to share your story of how the Internet has changed your life.  It was a ton of fun when I shared my story. What is yours? They can be found in the Long Tail Pavilion at Kiosk 27.

Have you been trying to get a cool domain but you just are unable to be cause they are all taken? .CO offers an alternative. It is the new domain extension approved by the ICANN that gives you a truly global, recognizable, and credible web address for branding your online presence. Stop by Booth 714 to learn more about how you can secure the domain of your dreams.

An International flavor is very present on the floor with companies traveling to the Expo from Berlin, Spain, Germany and Brazil eager to chat with you in the language of your choice.

So many great companies and so little time! Fortunately the Expo Hall is open on Wednesday from 10:30am – 6:00pm and don’t miss the Booth Crawl from 4:30pm – 6:00 pm.

.CO

Mashery

Neustar

80legs

Microsoft Tag

Pearltrees

How Do You.com

In celebration of the release of their first iPhone application, Dale Carnegie Training is giving away 200 hardback copies of “How To Win Friends & Influence People.” This classic book has sold over 15 million copies to date, and incorporates human relations principles which have helped generations of people worldwide enjoy personal and professional success.

The books will be distributed via contests to the readers at 20 blogs – including Bubblicious. To enter, our readers simply need to follow bubblicious on Twitter, and retweet this post (see the “Tweet this” button below). Winners will be notified via DM. Here are the overall Contest Rules on the Dale Carnegie blog.

The application is a an adaptation of Dale Carnegie courses aimed to help you enhance your relationships with others, gain cooperation, and be a leader. The skills gained can be directly applied to improving public speaking, mastering workplace culture, presentation effectiveness, team member engagement, leadership development, sales effectiveness, customer service and lots more.

For more information about the Secrets of Success app, visit the iTunes store.

To celebrate its new Believe Collection for Spring 2010, SpaRitual is asking fans to unleash their creativity and imagination and answer the question, what do you believe?

They’ve started the ‘Believe’ video sweepstakes that runs until April 21st and asks people to upload a video or record a video response on the SpaRitual Believe sweepstakes page hosted on YouTube expressing their unique take on what matters, inspires, or stirs passion — in short, what they believe.

To get inspired, watch the SpaRitual Believe video below.

Winners will be selected by an incredible panel of judges, featuring:

• Stephanie Yaggy, Executive Editor, Nailpro
• Hannah Lee, Executive Editor, Nails
• Shel Pink, Founder and VP, SpaRitual

A weekly winner will be selected from entries submitted from Wednesday through Tuesday at 11:59pm PDT and will receive the SpaRitual Believe Collection and Multi-Tasker Base & Topcoat in One.

One final grand prize winner will be selected on April 21. The grand prize winner will receive $500 worth of SpaRitual Products including the new Believe Spring 2010 collection.

When you enter, be sure to also email your real name, age and birthday, mailing address, and name of YouTube account holder to: TheSpaRitual [at] http://gmail.com/

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to bub.blicio.us, I also work at FutureWorks where one of my clients is SpaRitual, but that doesn’t make this sweepstakes any less fabulous.

First off, thank you to Brian for allowing me to do a guest post on Bub.  Last week I contacted Brian to solicit some advice on how I could get the word out about a little video I recently released on YouTube.

A contest video.

First, let me preface by saying that I’ve never entered a video contest before. The opportunity cost just didn’t make sense – taking time out from other work to essentially create a free commercial for someone and then shamelessly self-promote it in hopes of winning a gift certificate (?) Didn’t seem worth it.

Then I came across this contest sponsored by Lash Allure MD. There’s a $100,000 pot at stake – which, needless to say, is much larger than most other online video contest winnings. Immediately, my mind was racing about the web content I could fund with 100k. No more brand or studio pitches in 2010? I’d be in heaven.

The best part (or, in some cases, the worst)? The winner is NOT chosen based on a subjective judging process. The system is clear: the person with the most “votes” wins. Each YouTube star rating counts as one vote, and one comment, per user, per day, counts as a vote. Simple, quantifiable. And yet, a little unfair for those who don’t have massive YouTube followings.

So I decided to enter. First with my own video, and then after realizing that I would never win on my own regards, I teamed up Olga Kay, a YouTuber with about 70,000 subscribers. To incentivise people to help, we decided to offer up $10,000 of the prize money to dedicated commenters. Every day for 20 days, we pose a new question in the annotation on the video. Answer the question, and you could win $500. $500 to twenty people = $10,000 total giveaway.

Shameless.

It’s now Dec. 12th – only 8 days before the contest ends. We are currently in 2nd place, behind a witty YouTube blogger with a big following, but with the a little nudge here and there from the right people, we could definitely win the grand prize.

We’ve received several little endorsements from friends – including tweets from Ryan Higa and Dave Days – and brought on a new, third partner – Phil DeFranco.

We are asking for your help because this isn’t about making money to put in a savings account. It’s a viral contest, and as such, Olga, Phil and I want to put that money toward advancing our own web content initiatives.  Not to mention that we would still give away $10k (and a few other little surprises) to our commenters.

It’s hard for me to ask any favors of anyone, but in this case, I’m swallowing my pride.

So, please, if you have a chance today (and for the next 8 days) – rate and comment this video here —> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2_CZCfAaE – and RT if you can

Oh, and for all of you business owners out there looking to hold promotional video contests – take a cue from Lash Allure MD. By judging a video contest on ratings and comments, rather than on the video content itself, the company is benefiting from the self-promotional efforts of people like me as well as the engagement and interaction of potential customers who are rating/commenting on the videos. Smart.