Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

I started working with Chris Pirillo at Lockergnome during the summer of 2000 when the company was still based in an Iowa basement. This was before Chris became host of TechTV's Call For Help and launched Gnomedex as one of the most important annual tech gatherings on the planet. On 15 January 2001, Lockergnome's second daily newsletter, Lockergnome Digital Media, launched with writings from both myself and Adam Finley (who currently writes for Weblogs, Inc's Ad Jab). While Digital Media was officially an email newsletter, it was unofficially blogging before anyone really paid attention to blogging. We posted 5 or 6 new things every day and frequently crashed the server's of multimedia freeware apps by sending too much traffic. Five years later, I'm still doing the same thing, although my writing has improved and my tutorials cover a broad range of media topics.

While I'm certain I'd be doing something online today, I wouldn't be where I am right now if I hadn't talked Chris Pirillo into taking a chance on my writing. I've always been something of a media hacker, figuring out how to get audio gear to do stuff it wasn't officially designed to do. I'm a multimedia enthusiast to the extreme. Chris and I don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, but I'm forever thankful that he gave me my "big break".

To celebrate five years of online publishing, I'm giving away my brand new (never opened) Xbox 360. I could sell it on eBay for more than I paid to get it, but I'd rather give it away. As I mentioned earlier, the first issue of the email newsletter currently known as Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle came into digital being in January 2001. Five years later, I'm writing about how to hack your digital audio, digital movies and consumer electronic gadgets on a full-time basis, while sitting in my home office sipping coffee in tradeshow t-shirts and pajama pants avoiding the corporate rat race. In celebration of this five year milestone, I'm giving away an Xbox 360 Core System bundled with a 12-month Xbox Live Gold Subscription to one lucky individual.

I already have the Xbox 360 in my possession, so there's no camping out in line waiting for it to become available. I'm even paying shipping to get the game console from my doorstep to yours.

So how can you get the Xbox 360? Simple. Tell your audience about me. Blog about me. Blog about a problem I helped you solve. Call me names in your public forum, if it helps your ego. On 1 February 2006, I'll assess the server stats for jakeludington.com. If your site referred the most visitors based on my stats you get the Xbox 360. I'll post a daily top 20 list of the leading sites and number of total referrals each day starting on 10 January 2006 and continuing with daily updates thru 31 January 2006. If you place second, third, fourth or fifth, you'll receive a $50 gift certificate from Amazon.com.

For complete details, check out the Xbox 360 Giveaway page, where I layout some simple rules and where the stats will begin appearing on 10 January 2006.