I am of the opinion that in this scenerio inviting your family and friends to vote for "your' work is cheating.  If someone were to invite their family and friends to listen to all of the examples and decide for themselves which 3 they liked best, THAT would be great and exactly what this 'contest' needs.  Not people picking a number simply because they want their friend, brother, mom, ex-girlfriend to win a prize.

I understand that the 'eyes on the prize' syndrome is going to be within many people in any contest, especially one giving away a cool prize.  But the 'friends voting' thing proves nothing to this contest/exersize to the people who really wanted to see what could be done with the various libraries.  THAT was the point to this whole thing from my understanding not winning a prize.

Having a judging panel to pick out of the top 5 (or whatever number you want) would probably prevent someone from winning simply because they had the most friends with computers.  I understand Randy is 'staying the course' with the email voting, this was only a suggestion if anyone has the fortune or misfortune of putting together another pole type contest in the future.

-Mike

I'm in full agreement with contest being judged.