SCION is a modern-thinking brand on the forefront of youth culture and innovation, known for engaging its consumers in an interactive quest for creative ideas. One of SCION’s trademarks is its support of organizations that also seek to connect with children and young adults in expressive, artistic ways.

In its mission to advocate community outreach and foster creativity in the younger generation, SCION now joins forces with Cut&Paste in the FRESHLY SQUEEZED WEB DESIGN CHALLENGE (”Contest”). The website design competition will benefit J.U.i.C.E., a non-profit weekly after-school program that allows the underprivileged youth of Los Angeles to express themselves artistically through dance, music, visual arts, and MC skills workshops.

As J.U.i.C.E. focuses its resources on programming and operations, they need your help: SCION’s new online competition, the FRESHLY SQUEEZED WEB DESIGN CHALLENGE summons all web designers, illustrators, graffiti connoisseurs, coding geniuses, hip-hop enthusiasts, and creatives all around to help J.U.i.C.E. refine their online presence with a brand new homepage design. Web designs submitted for the competition should embody J.U.i.C.E.’s urban aesthetic and youthful spirit, while adding to the site’s functionality as a user-friendly vehicle for communication.

So, help city kids, put $5K in your pocket, and get your work seen. Submit your designs for a new and improved Web site for J.U.i.C.E., a nonprofit hip-hop arts program for LA’s urban youth, and you’ll be entered to win five grand, courtesy of SCION. All entries must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on April 10, 2009. Visit the site to learn more.

The premier design and interactive media competition for higher education students from around the world. The Adobe Design Achievement Awards celebrates student achievement reflecting the powerful convergence of technology and the creative and interactive arts.

The competition honors the most talented and promising interactive, motion and video, and traditional media created by students.

Prizes awarded include a trip to the Adobe Design Achievement Awards in New York City, over $60K US in cash and Adobe software prizes.

12 categories in 3 Media Areas

Interactive Media Categories
Browser-Based Design
Non-Browser-Based Design
Designer/Developer Collaboration
Mobile Design
Installation Design
Motion and Video Categories
Animation
Live Action
Motion Graphics
Traditional Media Categories
Illustration
Packaging
Photography
Print Communications

For more info, please visit the site.

The Nielsen Norman Group is conducting a design competition to identify the world’s ten best application user experiences. The top ten winners will be announced in September 2008.
Did you design a vertical-market application that’s great for, say, dentists, but you’re tired of never having anybody but dentists see your work? Or did you design a mission-critical enterprise app that’s making your company big bucks, but nobody outside the firm ever heard of it? It’s time for the people who design great practical applications to share the limelight. Enter your work for the award. Winners will get substantial publicity and recognition from being honored in the Application Design Annual.

Eligible designs: Applications are defined as providing features, commands, and functionality, especially to the extent that they allow users to access or manipulate complex or mission-critical data. (Thus, we exclude pure-information websites and intranets where the only user commands are to navigate. We also don’t consider games for this award.)

For more info, please visit the site.

MochiAds today announced that they are launching the “Flash Rock Star Games Contest” with Gaia Online. The contest is designed to recognize new talent among Flash game developers. Winners will be determined by Gaia’s community as well as a panel of judges over a three-month period. The winners will be awarded game development contracts from Gaia and receive over $25,000 worth of cash and prizes.

“This contest is a unique opportunity for Flash game developers to get the exposure they deserve,” said Mochi Media CEO Jameson Hsu. “There are a lot of talented developers out there, and we’re excited to bring them tools that increase community interaction with their games.”

The Gaia Audience Prizes will be determined during the month of April 2008. Contest entries will be showcased to members of the Gaia online community, who will play and vote on their favorite games. The games with the highest community score will determine the Audience Prize results.

Please visit the site to enter.

The “Call for Entries” is out for the best developed games Independent game developers have to offer. Now in its’ third year, this year’s contest promises to big bigger and better than ever beforewith more games and prizes. There are two catagories for game entries - General and Casual. The Winner of each catagory will receive a specially configured game development workstation and there are several prizes for Fianlists and Semi-Finalists. Also, to celebrate our upcoming generation of game developers, ECD Systems has added a special recognition award for student entries. Winner of the “Best Student Entry” will receive a cash scholarship award.

Voting begins March 14, 2008 so get your game entered early and help “Fuel the Fun”. If last year is an indication of what to expect, several million unique visitors will be coming to the site every month to play games and experience the latest and greatest developments of the Indie game development community. You see, the Indie Game Contest is not only a competition, it is an opportunity for Indie developers to showcase and promote their games and talents.

ECD Systems looks forward to assisting you and working with you. We truly wish you ALL the very best!

To submit a game, please visit the site

Welcome back to the Webware 100!

It worked before, so we’re doing it again: Today Webware is launching its second Webware 100 Awards, honoring the people’s choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services.

In our 2007 awards, more than half a million votes were cast to determine the most the popular Web apps. This time, with more apps available and even people using Web 2.0 apps, the contest should be even more intense.

There are 10 categories for awards in the Webware 100. Each category will have 10 winners in it. We’ve freshened the category lineup for this year:

Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks.
Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines.
Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences.
Communications: E-mail, chat, voice.
Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware.
Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites.
Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping.
Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests.
Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection.
Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

Nominations are open

Today we are opening up the awards with the nomination phase. If there’s a site that you want people to vote on, nominate it now using this form on www.webware.com/100. Nominations will close on January 25, 2008.