Remember that online competition Microsoft Australia set up where they’d give away $10,000 to someone who found the cash, that was buried somewhere on the Internet? The aim was to promote Internet Explorer 8, and visitors of the campaign website as it was launched initially told users of other browsers to ‘get lost’ in rather rude way, which led to a Mozilla developer setting up a parodying website in response (and MS being forced to change the wording).
Anyway, the treasure hunt apparently ended quietly a while back, when the campaign’s Twitter account announced that on August 18 someone had successfully retrieved both a website address and the password needed to access it. The winner, Gavin Ballard, was announced 11 days ago and I just stumbled across this blog post on i.techreport who revealed that the website was FastSafePrivateBetter.com and the password was ‘Courval’.
When you go to that website and enter the password, you can download a document with all the answers to the clues that were provided by Microsoft in order to find where the $10,000 was ‘buried’. Or you can just download the doc here or view the answers in the embedded file below.
Reading the document, I have to admit the campaign was more elaborate than I’d have thought and actually quite clever. The clues that were transmitted through the campaign’s Twitter account (which currently only has about 3550 followers left) were apparently quite mind-challenging at times and often required the treasure hunter to use Microsoft’s and many other – some even competing – online products to solve the puzzles.
It took Ballard 67 clues and 65 days to get to the correct answer.
And now I’m wishing I had participated in the online treasure hunt too.
Would have been a great competition… If I didn’t have to use something Microsoft made… :-/
I read the clues on the document. They are by far the most random clue that I have ever seen. What you are suppose to do is so completely random.
Please tell me that you agree, because after reading clue #6 I just felt like that this treasure hunt was completely impossible.
i suspect that the winner won by other means, because the clues are just so damn random.
Clue 6:
Use a crowbar to open the tun
Not only a subtle metaphor for the game in which you must break the code to
access the prize, this clue is a cryptic play on words. To use a crowbar is to pry.
Another word for tun is vat. Together you have “pry vat”, a corrupted form of
“private”, one of the four key words.
wtf is this?
cryptic clues like that are very common in british crosswords and I suspect in Australia too, it’s not too hard to believe that people can find the solution from such clues… have a look at some british newspapers for examples of how difficult cryptic crosswords are.
I thought it was a brilliant idea. Shame I found out about it a bit too late… so… errr, that means I shall keep away froM MS products a little longer… but if I had of entered, perhaps it would of swayed me to use more MS products. But right now, happy without most, thank you very much.
It is really a clever idea. Microsoft found an innovative way to promote business, MS product usage, and more. Also helps users too gain knowledge. Google’s Summer, Microsoft Ten Grand competitions play a nice role in business tactics and consumer attraction.
@jonathon, would have been a great comment, except you’re a total pus5y.
I had totally forgotten about it. Quite challenging actually. Microsoft is evolving. I’m enjoying their new ways of promoting products.
Well, their PR department is evolving anyway…
I use IE 8 all the time. I’m actually am very fond of it. I no longer use Firefox anymore and I was an avid user. Chrome and IE do everything I need and more.
Ditto. Firefox 3.5 stability has annoyed me for the last time. Chrome and IE8 are all I use. I won’t even consider trying Firefox again until version 4 next year. I personally hope that IE9 goes in the direction of Chrome. Chrome is great for power users.
Hell lot of clues there man! But $10k is a handsome amount for head scratching all the times
Great old idea reinvented like a pirate treasure map of old. William Lathom’s Garden of Unearthly Delights CD-ROM 1993 used the idea although with fractal image creations not cash.
http://www.neme...tis/latham.html
http://www-user...nf/l/latham.htm
best,
Peter Jones
P.S. Still searching for that garden too!
http://hodges-m...l.blogspot.com/
Hodges’ Health Career – Care Domains – Model
http://www.p-jo...es.demon.co.uk/
h2cm: help2Cmore – help-2-listen – help-2-care
http://twitter.com/h2cm
too much effort for a lousy 10k… can go play online poker instead and make more
“And now I’m wishing I had participated in the online treasure hunt too.”
Too bad it was only for Australian residents. I was disappointed when I read the fine print.
Holy crap. Those questions are really obscure. I wonder if it was still engaging for enough people for MSFT to give away 10k and spend all that time on it. And it was limited to just Australlia
http://www.trad...spx?symbol=msft
Oh! that was a great miss! Looking forward for another one.
Screw MSFT and their piece of shit browser!!
IE sucks!!!!
Firefox rocks!!
Chrome rocks!!!
IE8 is a great product. Firefox is good too, if you like crappy software written by preschoolers.
Interesting how you guys are always excited about talking crap about the new Microsoft marketing campaigns but always realize later on it wasn’t actually that bad.
Stop being a Microsoft hater. It’s not cool anymore!
I think TechCrunch should do a similar competition, all about startups covered here. Now that would be fun!
I wouldn’t have made it past the first clue!
The competition made Microsoft multiform.
Sucks I’m just hearing about it. I love games like this!!
Looks pretty cool. Hopefully Mozilla does something like it
Wasn’t the competition for Australia residents only?