The entries have been received and I am very happy to present the winners of the Future of Web Apps Conference in Miami at the end of February 2008. Thanks to everyone who entered.

If you didn’t win a pass, check out the early bird discount. If this conference is like the prior versions, it will be one of the best conferences of the year. Check out our previous conference coverage.

Here are the winners - congrats to each one:

• Nicole R
• Remy B
• Daniel T
• Kevin W
• Michael G

I will be in touch with the winners this evening with more details. I hope everyone enjoyed our Ten Days of Holiday Gifts.

Thanks to all of the companies who donated products and services to our 10 days of holiday gifts. We received a good amount of positive feedback so we will do it again in ‘08. There are some promotions that will continue this week: Future of Web Apps Conference Pass entries, OurStage Free Music and discounts on the CN Job Board. Check out all of the remaining offers.

Here are the winners for each of the various sweepstakes — thanks to all who entered! I’ve notified each company and they will contact you with the information in the coming days on how to activate your account.

Compete

• Peter G, Lisa R, Cece S, Austin H, Charles C, Britne R, Tim R

Check out Compete for their search analytics and Web comparison analytics products.

Clicky

• Michael G, Amish L

Check out Clicky for their Web analytics products.

CrazyEgg

• Nathan C, Corsin C, Jason B, Matthew D, Sarah H, Taylor M, Ross B, Paul C, Michael V, Yuvaraj T

Check out CrazyEgg for their site visualization products.

Day #10 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from a variety of providers. I’ve received several suggestions over the past week and here are those that have offered up specials for the CN reader.

Clicktale

Clicktale founder Tal Schwartz describes Clicktale as, "a continuous, worldwide, non-intrusive virtual usability lab and should be an indispensable part of every website and web application development cycle." In simple terms, it’s an excellent usability lab. Clicktale recently picked up a round of funding and is the strongest app I’ve seen in the virtual usability space. Check out our video review of the service.

Clicktale is offering ten (10) free 3-month professional memberships. Each of these subscription is worth $57! To enter for one of the passes, send in an entry using our contact form.

Pingdom

Pingdom is a service that monitors the uptime and response time of websites , servers or any other device that is and should be accessible over the internet. We use it on CN and you can read our previous coverage as well.

Using the discount code "centernetworks" (without the quotes) when signing up will give you a 50% discount AND 100 extra SMS for alerts. To use the code, go to www.pingdom.com/signup, select one of the package types (not trial), and enter the code into the "promotional code" box and press "Apply code". This also works when upgrading from within a trial account.

Harvest

Harvest lets you track time easily and accurately with Harvest. Designed and built for small business, Harvest is a breeze to set up and delivers powerful reports. Time is money, track it wisely. Some of the largest agencies are using Harvest and in my testing, it’s a good choice for those looking to track project time.

To signup using the CN discount, send an email to support-at-getharvest.com and mention the code CENTERHOLIDAY07 and they will take care of everything from there.

ExpertFlyer

ExpertFlyer is for frequent flyers and business travelers who want to see things like their travel agent would, and other pluses like Flight Alerts and the ability to see upgrade inventory for airlines that don’t even show them on their own website (like American Airlines, full list here). I’ve used the service over the years and it’s helped me get better seating for those transcons/intercons. The ability to figure out routing like a travel agent can give you better routings, lower prices and better seats. Just a note - you can’t actually book tickets on ExpertFlyer but you can do all of the research needed to make trips more effective.

ExpertFlyer is offering a 15% discount off of new subscriptions to ExpertFlyer - both regular membership and gift certificate. It’s the perfect gift for the frequent flyer. The coupon code is AMVGIGVZ.

Day #9 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from Compete. With Compete, you can identify rival search marketing strategies to take your SEM and SEO efforts to the next level, and stay on top of rivals with site metrics and audience profiles. Compete has launched a search analytics product and they have been kind enough to give us 250 credits to give away. Check out all of our Compete coverage.

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, Compete is offering 10 CN readers 25 search engine analytics credits. To enter, send in an entry using our contact form. We will select the winners this weekend!

(I’ve turned off comments on this post to avoid any entry confusion)

Day #8 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from CrazyEgg. The CrazyEgg service helps you understand where your traffic goes and how they interact with your site. CrazyEgg founder Hiten Shah describes the service as, "CrazyEgg helps you visualize your visitors. What that means is that it gives you a clear understanding of where people are clicking on a web page with visual heatmap and visual overlay. It is mainly a testing platform that helps you improve your web site.". Check out our full interview with Hiten.

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, CrazyEgg is offering Ten (10) Free Accounts for life. To enter for one of the passes, send in an entry using our contact form. We will select the winners this weekend!

(I’ve turned off comments on this post to avoid any entry confusion)

There are five technology items that are on the top of my list when I sit on Santa’s lap at the mall this week. I thought I’d share my list with you, explain why each one is on my list and ask ya’all to share your list of tech gifts you are looking for this year. The list is in no particular order.

Gift #1 - The iPhone

I’d like an iPhone because it would allow me to stay connected when I am out of the house or in transit (which is a lot of the time lately). I could keep in contact with CN, Twitter, and news as well. And how can I walk around NYC claiming to be a leading tech blogger with only an old beatup motorola cell with no data whatsoever?

Cost - $399 - Apple or AT&T Stores

Gift #2 - Sanyo Xacti HD700

I want to move into video more than I want a date with Rachel Stevens. (ok, just kidding) This type of video camera would allow me to whip it out whenever needed and get real, live footage of conferences, events, interviews and I could even bring out my whiteboard for demonstrations (my whiteboard is bigger than Scoble’s).

Cost - $499 - Amazon

Gift #3 - Nintendo Wii

I totally rock at the bowling and tennis - in fact, when I was at the WingSix offices last year (they host CN), I schooled all of them. I’d love to play some Mario Brothers as well!

Cost - $who knows - Amazon

Gift #4 - Apple Macbook Pro

My PC is about two-and-a-half years old, laptop about three years old. PC is about to die and I was thinking of combining the laptop and the desktop together. This would certainly help with traveling - no more forgetting things at home. I’d go with the 15" for easier travel. And if I get a Macbook Pro, I’d be cool and get to sit at the cool blogger tables at conferences. Right now I’m forced to the Dell table, it’s a boring crowd.

Cost - $1959 - Amazon

Gift #5 - Samsung LCD TV

I’ve got the same TV since first year in college - granted it was top of the line back then and still runs great - got a huge deal because I was salesman of the month at The Wiz. It’d be nice to get a LCD and take advantage of the free HDTV that time warner provides. I could also push Internet video to it so I could review video shows and twitter messages from the couch.

Cost $1150 - Amazon

Please share your gift wishes as well!

Day #7 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from Carson Systems. Carson Systems puts on some of the best conferences in my opinion and they have been kind enough to give us five (5) conference passes to give away for the Future of Web Apps in Miami on March 29th. Shameless plug - feel free to let the good people at Carson know that you’d like to see CN as a speaker at the conference!

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, Future of Web Apps is offering Five (5) Free Conference Passes. To enter for one of the passes, send in an entry using our contact form. We will select the winners on January 1st! Note: Please do not enter if you can’t make it to Miami!

(I’ve turned off comments on this post to avoid any entry confusion)

Seattle-based AdReady has announced this morning that it has raised $10 million in venture funding led by Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures. Silicon Valley-based Khosla Ventures and current investor Madrona Venture Group also participated in the round.

The idea of AdReady is simple: create basic, interactive ads using the pre-made templates, customize them to match your business or service and then buy campaigns on Google and Right Media using the AdReady tools. AdReady only takes a cut of the actual ad spend; use of the tool is at no charge. Agencies can white-label the service to use with their clients.

Last month AdReady added Hulu CEO Jason Kilar to its board.

Source:CenterNetworks

Day #6 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from yours truly, CenterNetworks. How could we not offer a holiday gift to our readers as well! We’ve slashed the price on a job board post from $99 to $49 - a 50% savings! The sale price will last through the end of the year. If you’d like to purchase credits to be used at any time in 2008, let us know.

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, get 50% off on any job board post.

I know what it’s like to be addicted. I was addicted to IRC in the mid-90s. It was a tough time - the bot wars, the ping floods, the no sleeping due to insecurity over potential nick loss, the network splits. It was tough. After a while, my friends came together and got me on some weekly injections and today I can say that I am no longer an addict. Ten days and counting.

Yesterday I posted some ideas on how to deal with the Twitter outage today. I received a variety of emails in my email client about how scared some were to live without their "fix" for 12 hours. I won’t post their names here as some are highly relevant folks in the Internet world and could have their reputations damaged. I just hope that we dont get to the point where we need a McRobertson Report to get the addicted people to stand up. Think about all of the people who lost a chance to be something because of those who pushed them aside because of Twitterdiction.

Some of my closest Internet buddies seem to be infected or on the verge of infection with Twitterdiction. Jeremiah Owyang has a pretty bad case of it, at least he gets paid to sit on Twitter. Jason Calacanis has a mild case of it - how do I know? Simple, when it’s down he gets the shakes because he has no way to get his dog photos to his sheep. Robert Scoble had the disease but I got him the meds and he is off it now which is great news that there is a cure! Marshall Kirkpatrick is close to the edge - even suggesting that Twitter pays his rent. I can’t even get Twitter to find me a date!

Yet these cases of Twitterdiction fall short compared to the entry from Dave Winer this morning. I have never met Dave though I would really like to as he seems like a smart, swell guy. We had a blast on the IRC channel during TC40 - he made the presentations fun. I enjoy reading his entries. But I think he forgot to take his meds today.

Some notes from his entry:

• What other basic form of communication goes down for 12 hours at a time?
• What if the web went offline for 12 hours at a time?
• Same with the phone network. Imagine if all the cell phones and land lines went down for scheduled maintenence for 12 hours. Again, it’s unthinkable.

In the comments Rachel Clarke suggests that more people outside the U.S. are using Twitter than inside the U.S. Side note, I had coffee with Rachel yesterday - she’s very bright and she might be developing a mild case of Twitterdiction but nowhere as bad as any of the other mentioned individuals.

So back to Dave. Is he really comparing Twitter to the Web in general? Or to phone service? All I can do is LOL. Twitter is ONLY a layer of communication. If it goes down, you just revert to the other 1,509,020 methods of communication. The unfortunate thing is that Dave is also speaking for many others who also suffer from this disease. Don’t worry Dave, by tomorrow Twitter will be back! (actually it hasn’t gone down yet from what I can tell)

Dave, send me your address. I’d be happy to help you out during the medication period to help you get over your Twitterdiction.

And to anyone wondering, I am working up a mega batch of the medication which I will bring to SXSW this year as I am sure we will need to get it out in large doses.

Source:CenterNetworks

Week 1 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts is now complete — boy did last week go quickly! Week 2 is in the hopper but I thought we should take a look back for anyone who might have missed the five great holiday gifts this past week!

Also, check out our 2007 Holiday Book Guide for the perfect book for anyone!

• Day 1 - Freshbooks - 30% off for the life of the account
• Day 2 - TapeFailure - 40% off for the life of the account
• Day 3 - Clicky - Free Pro Subscriptions
• Day 4 - Drop.io - Free Premium Upgrade Codes
• Day 5 - OurStage - 12 Free MP3 Songs Per Person