We are excited to announce the launch of Crate and Barrel's Ultimate Wedding Contest.

One lucky couple will win a $100,000 dream wedding package, and have their special day planned by celebrity wedding planner Jo Gartin.

“This promotion is a first for Crate and Barrel and it was essential that we select a platform that was flexible, scalable and reliable,” said John Seebeck, Direct Marketing Business Director at Crate and Barrel. “We are very pleased with the Strutta contest platform and the level of service we have received.”

“We are excited to be working with Crate and Barrel on this campaign,” added Strutta CEO Ben Pickering. “It is a great example of how Strutta’s contest API can be utilized to create a customized and integrated consumer experience.”

The "photo with story" contest continues through the next seven weeks, and the competition will be fierce. As of this morning, there are already over 2400 entries.

Strutta's online contest platform is now truly international. You can build and design your own online contests with user generated content, and open them up to any countries in the world you wish:

When we first launched our do-it-yourself contest platform in December, we agreed that we would continue to develop features based on popular demand.

Not surprisingly, our software has caught the attention of marketers the world over, many of whom were looking forward to hosting Strutta contests in their own countries. Our latest feature satisfies this demand, and lets contest creators select the regions they want included in their contest.

Important note: This change is more than just the addition of a dropbox containing a list of countries. Regions outside of the ones specified by the contest creator will be able to view the contest, but will be prevented from entering; their IPs blocked by a filter based on their geography. Additionally, the rules document that is included with all contest created with the software will continue to protect the interests of competitiors and their content, voters, and the contest creators in the regions they specify.

Have you tried building your own contest yet? You can try it for free- just click this link and select the "Basic" option to get started. Need help? The screencast on the homepage will help.

Since we launched the Strutta online contest software, we've used it to buid a number of cool contests. The really exciting thing is that now, people are realizing how easy is it to use themselves, and are doing some pretty neat things with it.

We thought we'd share a few great examples here, and a few tips about how to accomplish such coolness for yourself.

PopVox Awards

Pushing the boundaries of the software farthest is the PopVoX Awards, New Media BC's annual awards for all things digitial media in BC. With 23 categories and featuring BC's finest, PopVoXAwards.com is worth taking a peek at, and since it's only just underway, you can still cast your votes.

Pictured at right is the PopVox Awards home page design by Mod7. The configuration of the site itself was handled by Fuse Interactive.

Ski and Shoot Sunshine

Sunshine Village in Banff is holding an exciting contest for fans of the ski resort, and the list of prizes is truly awesome.

The entries in the contest are awe-inspiring, with so many jaw dropping images, and they're all generating plenty of votes and comments. Anyone can enter, and if you look carefully at the prizes, it's easy to narrow in on the one you want to win and dominate it. The entries deserve your votes, so give 'em some love. Visit Contest.SkiBanff.com

*Pictured at right is a photo called "Sunshine Heaven." Click through to vote for it.

ProtectTheTest.com

Every year in Squamish, a most epic mountain bike race is held. The Test of Metal is world reknowned, and now the course has been threatened. Tourism Squamish wants to save the land that the course in held on, and worked with VentureWeb of Squamish to build this contest, which also serves as an awareness campaign.

Check it out, cast your votes and tell your Test of Metal stories. Squamish would sure appreciate it.

Pictured at right is an entry entitled "I love the Test of Metal." Click through to vote for it.

The contests serve as great examples fo what's possible, but they don;t represent thelimit of what can be done, especially with the front-end design of the sites. If you're a CSS designer and you'd like to take a stab at amking soemthing terrific with our software, let us know! We'd love to see what you come up with.

If you comments of questions, feel free to use the form below.

Carolyn Wilman calls herself the "Contest Queen." Since 2004 she has shared contesting tips and advice on her site ContestQueen.com in the form of a biwweekly newsletter and a blog, and has even published a book on the topic, entitled "You Can't Win if You Don't Enter."

Needless to say, when we were sourcing the online landscape for experts in the contesting space, Carolyn stood out. And so it is with great pride and excitement that we announce that we are teaming with the Contest Queen for a new contest called "What is Your Winter Wonderland?"

The contest goes live tonight, 6pm PST in conjunction with Carolyn's live show on BlogTalkRadio. I (Jordan) will be Carolyn's guest. We'll talk about online contests, contest software, and spill all the details about this newest contest.

Check it out at ContestQueen.Strutta.com.

The NHL (National Hockey League), who controls all online operations for the entire league including all team sites, is using Drupal-based sites for its All Star fan balloting, fan favorite awards and "Greatest Captain Sweepstakes."

The seemingly omniscient Boris Mann forwarded me a link this morning to Dries Buytaert's post, and it seems the three of us agree; this is a huge endorsement for Drupal as a CMS. At Strutta, we consider it something of a badge of honour (if indirectly) for our own work, since our contest platform is based on none other than the aforementioned open source CMS. Looks like great minds think alike. 

If Mr. Bettman or his CTO happen to be reading this, I'll also humbly mention that our product is architected, developed, optimized and designed by some of the world's finest Drupal Jedis (you know, in case you ever feel like throwing us a bone like the fan video contests, etc. We're up to the task).