HiptopHunt Halloween Hunt

What?

The HiptopHunt Halloween Hunt is a photo-scavenger hunt. Instead of the typical scavenger hunt where you are required to collect items, the object of this hunt is to collect photos of the items with your hiptop and then email them in to the blog to be posted. Because you are not required to produce the item, just a photo, the list of hunt items gets to be a lot more interesting and a lot more fun!

Many old-school hiptop users are probably familiar with the Halloween Hunts that Hiptop Nation has held in the past. We're just carrying the tradition on with some slight improvements. (At least we think they're improvements.) Many thanks and a great deal of credit go out to MikePop, the founder of Hiptop Nation and the one responsible for the first 3 Halloween Hunts (2002, 2003, 2004). Also this year I would like to thank Divinity who ran the 2005 scavenger hunt, but due to personal reasons is unable to run it this year. These photo-scavenger hunts provided the inspiration for HiptopHunt.com.

Who?

Anyone with a camera-enabled Hiptop/Sidekick can play. You'll want to make sure you're in an area with good data connectivity on the 31st as well.

When?

Player registration is open until October 27th. Teams will be announced by October 30th. The list of hunt items will be posted at 12:00am (midnight) EST on October 31st. The hunt will last until 12:00am (midnight) EST on November 1st. Any entries posted before or after those times will be considered ineligible. If you are not in the Eastern United States, please be aware of what time this corresponds to in your area. Use the following links to help: Hunt Starts - Hunt Ends

How?

Teams

Teams will consist of 5-7 people. Teams can be organized on your own, and requested by filling in the "Preferred Team" box on the registration form. If you do not have a preferred team you will be assigned to one. If your preferred team does not have at least 5 registered users by October 28th, other players will be assigned to your team. I will do my best to keep requested teams together, but it will all depend on how many people register. If you register and then change your mind, please let me know immediately. The cut-off point for any team changes will be 12am (midnight) EST on October 27th. Final team adjustments will be made over the next few days and announced by October 30th. Any adjustments to be made can be emailed to exiva@hiptophunt.com.

Posting

Posting is relatively simple if you are familiar with any of the Hiptop community blogs. Here are the guidelines:

• Send from your hiptop or the desktop interface
• Send from the email address you registered with
• Send to halloween@hiptophunt.com
• Use the correct subject formatting (see below)
• Attach a photo (duh)

More on the subject line:

We are using the subject line of emails to keep track of everything, so pay very close attention to your subjects. The subject of your email must begin with: "item#:" (without the quotes) and the item# must be a valid item on the list. You will only get credit for one item per post, but feel free to post multiple pics of that item.

EMail example:

To: halloween@hiptophunt.com
From: registeredemail@tmail.com
Subject: 1: This is a test email
Body: Anything you want, explanation of picture if needed, etc.

If your email meets all the criteria above, it will automatically be posted to the site in a Pending state within 15 minutes. Once a judge has manually reviewed the post its status will be changed to Approved, Rejected, Duplicate, or in some cases just Deleted. Please keep in mind that posts will be approved in random spurts. Your post may be approved in 5 minutes or not for an hour or two, however all posts will be processed before a winner is announced.

Rejected Posts

Posts will be rejected by the judges for a few reasons:

• Post is a picture of a picture. Only submit original pictures of items.
• Picture does not match the item it was posted as.
• It is not possible to determine the item in the picture.
• Picture was not taken by a hiptop camera.

Scoring

Posts will be manually approved and points will be awarded for each approved item. Every hour, on the hour, scores will be updated and recalculated. Scores should be final a day or two after Halloween, once all posts have been processed. The amount of points for each item will be listed next to each item.

Winners

Prizes are in the works for the winning team and the individual with the most points.

Additional questions?

Feel free to send me an email exiva@hiptophunt.com