Congratulations to the winners!
I like Turtle#, Bitster, Silver Rubix and Paper Ball very much!
But I am very disappointed in the community voting and I really don''t understand how the community winner was decided. Can you explain?
I also would like to read some comments of the judges on the winning entries.

Hi All,

I want to thank everyone that voted for and enjoyed my entry and also supported me morally.

$1000 of this prize is going to these folks: http://www.vegfamcharity.org.uk/

The other $500 is going to another non-profit.

Thanks again!

-- Mohan

P.S. At the risk of exacerbating things even more, I made a pledge to all of my Animal Rights and vegetarian contacts that I would make a mention of these causes if I won and had the forum to do so. Here''s a link to my website discussing these topics:

http://www.thisiscool.com/mohan/ardiscus.html

I also write free (as in beer) programs:

http://www.thisiscool.com/coolprogs.htm

and release them as "PropagandaWare" (intended as a humorous term), telling people that if they enjoy and continue to use them, they should visit certain Animal Rights and vegetarian sites. These sites can be found at the bottom of my Triangle Puzzle webpage. (The forum filter blocked these when I tried to post them here.)

http://www.thisiscool.com/triangle.htm

Thanks again!

Congrats to Mohan, with bonus kudos for generously distributing his winnings to charity. A hearty thumbs-up to all the other winning entries.

I''d like to echo John''s comments here - the last-minute dubious downvoting was a real let-down, but I guess human nature was bound to put in an appearance sooner or later.

Are the judges likely to elucidate on the selection process and / or give ''honourable mentions'' etc?

Due thanks to MS for hosting this event in the first place - I enjoyed the challenge and learned a lot in the process.

First of all Congratulations to all winners. Great event. It would be nice if MS publish the code also for all the entries. This will provide lot of resource to others for learning. Hope of having such challenge again soon.

CONGRATS to Ueli and the rest of the winners!!!

I hope to see you at MIX!

Hi John & Conan,

We knew that there was a risk of "cheating" if we didn''t force people to create an account before rating entries, but we wanted to keep things as open as possible to encourage more participation.

There were some obvious cases of fraudulent ratings (both voting up and voting down). So we did some data scrubbing to reach the final count.

Not only did Mohan meet the contest requirements, but he ran an AMAZING campaign to gather support. Let''s just say the Obama people could learn a few things from him. ;)

Great job guys and congrats to all the winners. I thought that this was a great competition!

Excellent Mohan,

This is truly great news that you are a winner!

John Bruin, (very politely said) you have no reason at all for being disappointed in the community voting because the community definitely made a terrific decision.

Mohan represents the very best of the MIX Online community of web designers and developers who innovate the web.

-Tom

Thanks, Tom.

Although those are flattering words, I don''t actually believe them myself. There were many other entries that had stunning graphics, 3d-rendering, etc. and looked much better aesthetically than mine. I wholeheartedly and readily admit this. I want to thank everyone for being good sports about my entry winning given that it definitely wasn''t as flashy as many other entries.

That being said, I wouldn''t have promoted my entry if I wasn''t very proud of it, which I am. I decided in advance what functionality I wanted my program to have and once that was packed in, there simply wasn''t any room for any flashiness to enhance it. I suppose I could have used better images for the pegs, but that''s really about it. Although I empathize with the feelings some might have that this entry wasn''t flashy enough to take the top prize, I also take solace in the fact that different people have different tastes, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I personally have strong positive feelings about my entry, one of the Judge''s runner''s up made positive comments about it, and the Judge''s winner also praised my entry and said that the prize was deserved. I respect the opinions of those people very much.

None of this of course detracts from the high quality of the other entries (and I would have been understanding and gracious about it if they had won ;) ).

Thanks again!

I agree with John Bruin, that we would like to see more comments from judges.

I can''t help but be reminded of this great post;

For Every Animal You Don''t Eat, I''m Going To Eat Three;
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sponsor

People with good advertisement skills always win in such competitions...

I published the source code of Turtle# on my website: http://www.5pmserious.com/Turtle/tabid/55/Default.aspx.