When people buy goods and services online, that’s considered ecommerce, but when people shop over their phones its mcommerce and this one of the fastest growing sectors of the new economy.

ShrinkRay is a powerful tool used to build mobile applications and web 2.0 widgets. It is a Device Management System (DMS) and an Application Toolkit that can be customized to suit any business and marketing goals. This friendly company will works with their clients to ensure the application delivers all neccessary functionality.  ShrinkRay Mobile is quite possibly the best mobile platform available. Its easy to use and very efficient.

Macro Photos of Life contest hopes to amass a large display of small living things. Photographers are asked to use their camera’s macro lens to capture the freckles, skin pores and whiskers of the tiniest possible subjects. Already we have seen wasps, spiders and even a humming bird!

Prize is a free deluxe Locaboire Ontario Wine Tour Travel Package for two adults, a charter bus, wine and brewery tour in Eastern Ontario. The prize package includes two meals and one night accommodation at a beautiful Brighton Ontario Bed and Breakfast.

Contest ENDS: 12:01 am on the morning of Jan 1st 2010

The good folks at Kanetix are delighted with the results of the 1st Ontario Tourist Attractions photo contest.

That’s because the Ontario Tourist Attractions photo contest was very well received, with over seventy five photos submitted and almost 3000 registered votes collected in September and October 2009.

“Clearly the contest was a lot of fun for all involved. We were quite impressed with the quality of pictures submitted, and all of us on the marketing team enjoyed watching as new images were uploaded and voted on by participants.” said Wayne John, one of the marketing team leads. “And of course, it was a pleasure to mail the Gift Certificates to the winners: Mommakoala in Hamilton, and Slimmswitch in Ottawa.  thanks to everyone who participated, and to Lenzr.com for making it happen.”

The Kanetix sponsored event was a lot of fun, and the images in the archives reflect that excitement. They are sure to be enjoyed by many visitors for a long time to come. Perhaps these pictures will inspire travelers from outside Canada to visit and enjoy our attractions.

Lenzr.com is thrilled that Kanetix has decided to do it again…

The Kanetix.ca sponsored Ontario Tourist Attractions 2 photo contest on Lenzr.com will once again show off our province’s most interesting travel destinations. “There is something really satisfying in that index of pictures.” said Wayne, “My favorites are the snapshots of unusual objects and sights with quirky headlines and captions. This time we encourage more photos of out-of-the-way places and lesser known travel destinations from all across the province”

Lenzr believes this contest theme is a great association for Kanetix.ca who specialize in delivering rock bottom car insurance quotes and the challenge is even more relevant when people submit family road trip pictures. As we all know, the less you pay for your car insurance, the more you can spend on your holidays.

Of course all submissions should be crisp, clear and have a compelling caption that explains the location and essence of the picture. The winner of this challenge will be the member that uploads the top rated image when the contest ends on January 1st 2010 as determined by the quantity of registered votes + popular votes / total number of votes.

Are you paying too much for your mortgage or your insurance policies? Perhaps Kanetix can help you to find a cheaper rate. As Canada’s leader in online insurance and mortgage price comparisons, Kanetix.ca can quickly provide you with competing quotes from top rated companies. Pick the company with the best rate and in most cases, arrange for coverage online.

Compare mortgage rates, car insurance, life insurance, home/property insurance, motorcycle insurance, business insurance, travel insurance, health insurance, and more…

On September 28th 2009 at a Starbucks in Mississauga Steven Prentice the CEO of Bristall Morgan Inc met a Toronto photographer named Mario Pirraglia who was the winner of the Emergency in Toronto photo contest this summer.

Mario Pirraglia (mpirra on Lenzr) is a business executive in the natural gas vehicle industry who travels extensively for business. A passionate shutterbug his job gives him the opportunity to expand his travel photography portfolio.

Mario’s photo, Firefighter saving lives carried the caption, “Toronto Firefighter returning from a fire” and soon collected 55 green thumbs up to win the challenge on August 31st 2009.

When I asked Steven Prentice to describe the encounter and Mario (as well as obtain the photos seen here) he wrote this terrific account,

It was a really great experience. Mario and I met at a Starbucks in Mississauga and chatted for an hour and discovered we had a great number of things in common, including a love of cars, playing music, photography, and expensive watches. I was truly fascinated to learn about his business and about alternate sources of energy (sounds like I’m writing a grade 8 essay here), but given that we were complete strangers at the start, I really felt it was an hour well spent, and hopefully Mario is someone with whom I can keep in touch.

To use a photographic analogy that I have used for many years, it’s what I call the “Polaroid effect.” When you meet someone for the first time, the slate is quite blank and can remain that way, but as you talk, the colours appear…  That’s one of the great things about meeting people and about taking the time – in the true spirit of Time Management – to slow down and enjoy a slice of their life.

I enjoyed the whole experience of sponsoring this contest, and hopefully Mario will be coming out to see one of my band’s performances, and maybe taking a few pix. After all, he’s well qualified.

On the job training is better than schooling, and academic teaching jobs in higher education require a time savvy person of chronologically cognizant of their endeavours.

Lenzr agrees. He wins the grand prize, seen here, an Esquire Verve 2020 mens’ watch.

Perhaps the answer to the eternal question “which smart phone should I choose, iPhone, Blackberry or Palm Pre?” has finally been answered.

Snickerzmom, who could have had any make and model, chose a new 16GB 3GS iPhone. The really interesting thing is that she already has an iPhone,  and yet she chose it again… What does that tell you?
Thursday Sept 3rd, 2009 inside the Rogers center at the Arriba restaurant at a cozy table by the window overlooking the Blue Jays practice before their game with the New York Yankees, Paul Peic of myCELLmyTERMS.com produces the grand prize for Snickerzmom and Dad.

Paul wrote about the Lenzr photo contest on The Cell Phone Blog, which is fast becoming a terrific niche destination for all Canadian cell phone users

What an amazing photo finish for Lenzr, Summer in Toronto July to Sept 2009

What a perfect end to a beautiful story about a web savvy woman with a camera phone seizing an opportunity to win another camera phone that’s made even more powerful by the recurring Blue Jays game motif. Is this true social media? You bet.  She couldn’t done it without her friends.
Colleen Cole of Brampton Ontario harnessed her friends on other social networks and brought them to the site, directly to her image using the link available on the vote page. Dad at The Game totaled 112 green thumbs up. Not bad considering there were 58 pictures and over 3700 votes.

The first photo contest on Lenzr was won with this photo.   Dad has the same enthusiastic expression on his face in every shot.

You can follow Talking Colleen on Twitter and find out more about the contests she enters there and what’s new with her ‘BF and three cats’.

There will be more information regarding the other two contest winners, and three new contests and sponsors and the changes that have been made to  Lenzr.com in the days to come.

This amazing woman is the Contest Queen, a very active contest participant and promoter with over twenty years experience and wisdom to share. She’s also a prolific author and thinker and a very informative and entertaining blogger.  Add it all up and Carolyn is a profoundly original web marketer that would probably like to be considered North America’s Contest Queen, and indeed that’s exactly what she’s becoming…

You can read all about Carolyn Wilman, the Contest Queen on Canada Blog Friends which has just recently profiled her and published her vision of the future. The author has once again gone to great lengths to get all the subject URLS in order, and link to all platforms and properties in Carolyn’s royal realm.

Buy her book You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter to read all her secrets.

Lenzr.com is almost sixty days old, and now has 73 members that have uploaded 114 original photos which have collectively amassed 6000 votes.  So far only one user has been banned from the website, and only four photos have been removed by Admin from the listings.

Here’s a glance at the Google Analytics dashboard for the entire first contest period. The spikes correspond to marketing initiatives by partners on various affiliated platforms. Participation is growing as Lenzr.com discovers new markets for contest data and streamlines the information distribution processes.

Hooray!  This is reason enough to cheer. I’ve seen other contests with twice the budget do half those numbers. And I want to give a shout out to those photographers who uploaded some really creative shots (like mighty shrimp’s picture of the 2008 Queen St Fire (below) and the lady who gave up the pictures of Cherry beach and Toronto Harbourfront. The high level of creativity is another big reason to cheer…Yay!

Summer in Toronto is the most successful contest with 56 pictures submissions and 3594 votes.  Highlights here include pictures of a man and dog eating ice cream, a Toronto Blue Jays fan, and a little boy in a splash pond.

Best Toronto Skyline has 44 photos submissions, including some amazing shots with lightning and ducks and vintage shots of the skyline, that have together gathered a total of  2390 votes.

Emergency in Toronto had 14 photos and 269 total votes – this was the hardest challenge and yet our favourite of the bunch. Photos like the one below (credit to mighty shrimp) are perfect as make Lenzr.com a worthwhile social political and historically culturally relevant destination.  In otherwords these shots make Lenzr cool.

Stay tuned for information on contest winners. These three contests end August 31st 2009. The Winners are the members who uploaded the most popular photos in each contest, as determined by the number of green thumbs up votes. And I should mention that the red ‘thumbs down’ vote does nothing, just so you know. Yes that’s what we’re changing…

UPCOMING CHANGES:
It’s no secret the voting mechanism is flawed – its too simple and inspires user manipulation. There’ll will be a multitude of minor changes coming in Contest Period #2 (the next round of contests will commence September 1st and conclude on October 31st 2009) The very first thing to be changed is the voting mechanism, alterations are also being made to the user registration process.

REGISTRATION:
Upcoming changes will force all current users to re register their usernames and profile information and check boxes to accept or deny coupons from sponsors, and other options.

LENZR WIDGET ADOPTERS
Have a look at DebLewis.ca and check out the 100x vertical sidebar widget on the lower half of the template.

Lenzr was built to help photographers gain attention in online media and get professional work by providing an easy,  fun to use platform that showcases great pictures.

Registered members have the option of listing their web URL in their profile and it really makes us happy when we see users taking advantage of this feature.  A link is a link, and successful artists and photographers have hundreds of them.  This little piece of social capital belongs to the photographers that use the site and that’s another curious biproduct of this cute little photo contest construct.

As we evolve Lenzr’s brand of premium online entertainment, we’ll no doubt make some friends along the way.

This is the best photo competition index website that we’ve ever seen;  our experts are indeed surprised at how much information these developers and administrators (and data entry interns) have thus far squeezed into this portal.  Seriously there must be over five hundred contests on there now, and almost all of them are free.

Photo Contest Rituals

This website boasts that a new photo contest is added everyday, and that’s exactly what serial web contest participants need to hear to plan and execute their daily entries, or atleast make bi-weekly visits.  That’s another winning strategy at work here.

Coincidently, we find it interesting to note that almost none of the contests listed on the afformentioned web index  are judged by the website’s own membership;  so we recognize now that this is something that makes Lenzr unique, (even if it is fraught with click fraud and abuse by iPhone users and their duplicitous friends* ).

RELAX devotees. *There are some serious changes coming down the pipe for the next round of contests on Lenzr, and that includes the scoring system. We’re confident, you’re going to like it.

Today is Sunday July 11th and Lenzr has been up for eleven days.  In that time seven photos have been uploaded, and one hundred and fifty votes have been recorded. There are twenty seven registered members and sixteen comments. But there’s so much new information about the growth and general reaction to Lenzr.com off site that it has become a daunting task to try and record it all every day.

Anyone seeking information about the birth of Lenzr should read Rob Campbell’s Smojoe blog which discusses the origins of Lenzr and the evolution of the photo contest from its germination on Dumpdiggers.com

Yesterday, Andrew Ainsworth of AndyFilmSchool.com sent me this link which is the New York Times reporting the success of their online photography contest.  Here the author alludes to the networking advantages that professional photographers enjoy when they participate in these types of events.

Today the folks at Lenzr.com are proud to announce that our local photo contest has been accepted into Toronto-Forums.com as a separate and distinct content category. We look to the future of this relationship as an official channel by which we might communicate with sponsors and patrons.

So check it out. Now there’s an official Lenzr category on Toronto Forums. This is where I will introduce the first ever Lenzr photo contest, Best Toronto Skyline.

Here’s what it looks like in their index.  Come join and chat here about Lenzr.