10 Millionth Download coming soon - win a SpaceNavigator!

[Mickey]

In about two weeks, the 10 millionth file will be downloaded from Google Earth Hacks. In celebration of that, 3DConnexion (http://3dconnexion.com/) has sent us two SpaceNavigators (http://3dconnexion.com/3dmouse/spacenavigator.php) to give away! I absolutely love my SpaceNavigator (http://www.gearthhacks.com/blog/20070517/finally-got-a-spacenavigator-and-you-should-too/), and I'm thrilled that they've given us a few more to give away. Here's how the contest will work:

- Guess the date and time of our 10 millionth download.
- You can see the current count on our main file downloads page (http://www.gearthhacks.com/downloads/).
- The two people closest to the correct time win!

Pretty easy, huh? Now for a few rules:

- No entries will be accepted once we have more than 9,950,000 downloads.
- You may only enter once.
- You may not modify your entry. Once it's in, it's in.
- All times listed are in the Eastern Standard Time (EST) timezone.

You can use this thread to discuss the contest. To enter, use our official entry thread here (http://www.gearthhacks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11145).

Good luck!

Additional clarification, added 4:41pm EST - Feb 1, 2008

- If you fail to designate AM or PM, your entry will be considered to be written in military time.
- In the event of a tie, should two people submit the same time/date and/or if two time/dates are exactly equal from the winning time, the first entrant will be the winner.

[Mickey]

As posted in the blog (http://www.gearthhacks.com/blog/20080211/more-prizes-for-the-10-million-contest/), we now have some more prizes to include! The prizes were furnished by Google and include:

- Some paper notebooks
- Some t-shirts
- Some yo-yos
- Some light-up pins

The new prize schedule is as follows:

- 1st prize - A 3DConnexion (http://3dconnexion.com/) SpaceNavigator (http://3dconnexion.com/3dmouse/spacenavigator.php) and your choice of a piece of Google swag.
- 2nd prize - Same as first
- 3rd-5th prize - Your choice of a piece of Google swag, based on what’s left after the previous winners have made their picks.

If you haven't entered yet, get those picks in soon (http://www.gearthhacks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11145). You must enter before we get to 9,950,000 downloads, and that will probably happen in less than a day. Good luck!

[SpiderX22]

Rawr..I've already lost. But good luck to everyone out there!

[anund]

It's obvious someone is cheating. It used to be around 300 downloads per hour, now it's almost 1500 downloads per hour.

[Mickey]

It's possible, but it appears to be more of just an influx of traffic.

No single item it getting the bulk of the downloads, and no single IP is spiking in traffic. If someone is cheating, they're being very slick with how they do it.

[martin]

On the second day after the contest started, i counted 7500 downloads in 24 hours and based my calculation on that.
On the third and fourth day ist was around ~10000.
Then 15000 etc.
Interesting...

[Mickey]

Our lifetime average is around 11,000/day. However, when you consider that it wasn't nearly that high at the beginning, it's been higher lately.

We had been running around 10,000/day (lost some Google traffic), but that seems to be coming back and the pace is picking back up.

[SpiderX22]

It's obvious someone is cheating. It used to be around 300 downloads per hour, now it's almost 1500 downloads per hour.

This temporary jump was caused by Google's release of their monthly newsletter of which one of the files on this website (Google Earth's Biggest Ship Collection) was chosen. This caused the influx of traffic you saw. And that's not cheating, because Google chooses the files for their own newsletter (and although it IS my file, I have nothing to do with Google. Besides, I put my guess in before the Newsletter traffic jump).

[martin]

...and maybe because i put a little ad on panoramio.com ;)

[SpiderX22]

lol nice. =)

[Mickey]

The winning information, in case you missed it in the other thread:

http://www.gearthhacks.com/blog/20080216/10-million-downloads/

[Gandolf]

Great. Congrats to the winners.:givebeer:

Now we need to shoot for 100000 members.:spin:

[Mickey]

Now we need to shoot for 100000 members.:spin:
Agreed. I'm hoping GEMMO (http://www.gearthhacks.com/blog/20080215/google-earth-mmo-coming-soon-want-to-beta-test-it/) will help when it gets released, as that will obviously require registration. We'll see.

When I eased the restrictions on downloading (no longer needed to be registered), our registration pace went way down. However, I still think that decision was ultimately better for the site, as it made it better for the users. I feel confident in saying that we wouldn't have hit 10 million downloads already if I hadn't made that change.

[Mickey]

Digg it!

http://digg.com/software/Google_Earth_Hacks_goes_over_10_000_000_downloads