Contest Winners Selected! Stay Tuned to See Them In Action!

Wow. Now that was TOUGH. Over 3,000 cracked-out entries were submitted to CrackBerry.com's What Would You Do for a BlackBerry Storm? Contest and narrowing it down to only ten deserving winners was difficult! Seriously, I wish we had 3,000 new BlackBerry Smartphones to giveaway, as you all really deserve one (RIM.. Verizon... if you're reading this and have a few thousand extra devices you want to part with, let me know!). The things some of you are willing to do for a free BlackBerry are just nuts. TRUE CRACKBERRY ADDICTS... each and every one of you!

But alas, we had to pick ten winners and that is what we did. If you are reading this and haven't heard from me, then unfortuntately your entry was not selected. I know, it sucks. Again, I SERIOUSLY wish we had more smartphones to part with here. But don't worry, this is CrackBerry.com... we'll have another contest starting up soon (literally less than two weeks away) where you'll have yet another chance to win your smartphone of choice!

Whittling down all of the entries to the top ten was an intense process, which took a lot longer than we initially planned for. We assembled a panel of judges, comprised of representatives from our contest sponsors, and worked hard to cut down the 3,000+ entries to 100 semi-finalists, with each judge putting forth his top 20 favorites. From there the task at hand got even more challenging. Here's what eventually helped... In going through so many submissions one of the things we noticed was that the vast majority fell into one of about five different "themes" of ideas. So in the end, we picked the top two winners in each of the five categories we defined. The two winners in each category are the ones that really stood out from the rest - either being the most detailed, unique, creative or outrageous (or any and all combinations of those!!). I think this strategy made things fair for all and has created a good mix of winning entries!

All said and done, I think the ten finalists we selected are deserving winners. We had a back-up winner in each category selected just in case, but I called up all ten winners personally and every single one of them was PUMPED to be selected and more than willing to carry out their To Dos. I even said to some, "Are you SURE you actually want to do that?!" I was expecting some back outs, but nope... CrackBerry.com readers are totally hardcore!

You can tell I'm being a little vague here with the winners' details and what these five categories are, and that's because we want to keep the suspense up and surprise y'all. The winners have all promised to keep their To Dos as secret as possible until we feature them here on CrackBerry.com. So that's what what we're going to do. As each of the winners carries out their To Do and submits the "evidence" to me, I'll post it in the blogs for all of CrackBerry Nation to see. Once all ten winners have been announced on the site, we'll put them all together on the current contest page to stand the test of time (along with some of our other favorite submissions that didn't quite make it in). The first winner will be announced on Monday, so keep it locked to CrackBerry.com!

THANK YOU to all those who participated, CONGRATS to all of our winners, and be sure to visit and support all of our sponsors (click the image above for more details on each of them) who helped make this event possible and contributed to the difficult task of judging.