On a recent tour of Silicon Valley, our fearless leader Ben Pickering sat down with Read Write Web's (and Canada's own!) Dana Oshiro to talk about "How To Run and Online Contest" for their Read Write Start channel.

From the article:

Strutta lets you collect user-generated content and showcase it in a seamless web contest experience. Users can upload videos and photos, vote on other contest content and promote entries to their Twitter and Facebook friends.

Thanks for checking us out, Dana!

The best way to incorporate a Strutta contest as part of your site is to create a domain C-name.

In this example, we're going to create the Cname "contest" at www.exampledomain.com. When the settings are correct, our fictional contest should reside at http://contest.exampledomain.com. Every domain registrar has specific directions as to how to accomplish this domain change, and Google provides a list of instructions for many of them at the bottom of this page.

For the sake of this example, we'll use the specific instructions for GoDaddy, a popular domain registrar. Keep in mind for that for this to work, your DNS settings need to be pointing to your domain regsistrar itself (like it is by default when you buy it), or your domain needs to have an A-record or be CNAME'd already at the top level. Still with us? Great.

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You'll be directed to the Domain Manager page.
3. Click the domain that you'd like to use with Strutta.
4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records in the box entitled Total DNS Control.
   Note: Adding entries to the Manage Subdomains section does not create a CNAME record.
5. Click Add New CNAME Record. If you've already created a CNAME record for the address, click the marker icon under the Actions column next to the existing CNAME record.
6. In the box that reads "Enter an Alias name," enter: contest.
7. In the "Points to Host Name" box, enter: hosted.strutta.com. Keep the TTL setting as the default.
8. Click OK. In the Review and status box, you can see the results of your updates.

The changes won't take effect immediately, but will before too long. If your settings in your Strutta account are set correcty, then once the change has taken effect, our example contest would be live at http://contest.exampledomain.com.

We understand that the preceeding directions can be incredibly confusing, especially if it's the first time you've ever made changes to your domain's DNS settings. It can be downright daunting. If you need a hand, hit us up at the feedback link on the top left, or using the contact info at the bottom of this page.

This morning I was granted access to the secret Strutta Laboratories to peek over the shoulder of Senior Developer Mike Holly, to talk about the leaderboard he's working on for our soon-to-be-released online contest platform.

As we sipped our coffee and periodically glanced out the window at a sunny, calm Burrard Inlet...who am I kidding- I had 89 seconds left of his attention before he delved back into his work. So like the hounding reporter I once was, I started firing questions at the tall, ginger-haired genius.

We conducted a very brief audit of USA Today's Ad Meter, the rating system charged with the task of choosing America's choice for best Super Bowl Ad. That's something of a high water mark for this kind of user voting, but our man Mike was quick to find errors with the Ad Meter, and seemed anything but impressed. To be fair, it's the off-season for Super Bowl Ads (and the Ad Meter) until during and immediately following the big game, so we turned our focus toward the features of our product, and how it measures up. 

When drilled about the specifics of the Strutta Leaderboard, Holly spoke of its flexibility, and how any third parties' use of it could be vastly different from the next. "Potentially, we're going to be ranking on any number of criteria, he stated. "We can rank not only by user popularity like votes or views, but also by groups like by school or by company." 

He pauses for a moment, and then quips with an ironic tone that is certainly not lost on me. "It's sophisticated sub-ranking technology." I can tell he's itching to get back to work, so I quickly blurt out one last question. 

I ask about the visualization and design of the way the data gets displayed, and Mike nods and assures me that clients will have plenty of control over the way the data is displayed, too. I notice he' already turned his gaze back to the lines of code on his screen. I've lost him, and it's now time to take the 15 step trek back to my own desk, a few feet further from the gorgeous view of the North Shore.

While we will still be launching examples of Strutta's platform at work in the very near future, our team has turned their attention to the the finishing touches of our software and the new .com site, which means the wait will be over soon!