Enter to win a free Tom Tom ONE GPS unit!

by Grant Martin on

Did that review of the Tom Tom XL330s get you all envious that you don’t have a GPS for this summer’s road trip? Well you’re in luck! In addition to the other the XL330s sent over to the Gadling offices, our friends at Tom Tom sent us an extra Tom Tom ONE 3rd edition to give away to one lucky winner!

Chocked with features like turn-by-turn directions, millions of points of interest and a clean simple interface, the third edition ONE is the best selling GPS on the market.

And it can be yours. Just leave an entry telling us how you learn your way around a city you’re visiting in the comments below and we’ll draw a lucky winner by next Tuesday, July 15th.

Good luck!

  • To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us how you learn your way around a city you’re visiting.
  • The comment must be left before Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 5PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
  • One Grand Prize Winner will receive a free Tom Tom ONE, Third Edition
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
  • GPS is valued at $199.00.
  • Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Celebrate Cinco de Mayo with free tickets from Southwest Airlines!

by Grant Martin on

Happy Cinco De Mayo! In honor of this fifth day of May, we’re teaming up with Southwest Airlines to give away a free pair of roundtrip tickets to anywhere they fly.

That’s right, whether you want to fly from Albany to Albuquerque for your Aunt Jennie’s Apple Pie or Washington DC to West Palm Beach, for cousin Willy’s famous four-day Thanksgiving bar crawl, you can cash these tickets in on us.

Tickets are good to redeem up to one year from the contest end with no blackout dates for you and a special friend. Just leave a comment below telling us where you’d like to go should you win the tickets and we’ll randomly draw one winner by this Friday. Make sure you give a shout out to our friends at Southwest for providing the tickets for the giveaway as well.

Happy travels from Gadling and Southwest Airlines!

  • To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us where you’d like to go should you win the tickets (See a map of where they fly here).
  • The comment must be left before Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 5PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
  • One Grand Prize Winner will receive a free pair of roundtrip tickets to anywhere Southwest Airlines flies
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
  • Tickets are valued at $400.00 per ticket.
  • Tickets are fully transferrable, are valid for one year, and are good for travel to any of the 64 cities Southwest serves.
  • Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Spain to “dance the chiki chiki” at Eurovision 2008

by Abha Malpani on

What’s a country to do when two million residents vote for a man who calls himself Rodolfo Chikilicuatre and looks like an exaggerated (not to mention distorted) version of Elvis, to represent their country in this year’s Eurovision?

Although condemned by the press, there is nothing that can be done but laugh and join in the “chiki chiki”!

Eurovision is one of the longest running television programs in the world. It’s a singing competition where each country sends a representative; the day of the contest, all participants must sing their respective songs live as the European audience votes for the best song.

Being a continent-wide singing competition, the contest is generally taken seriously, but the Spanish people seem to have a different definition of that as they chose to send the contestant they found most absurd and hilarious. The representing song “Baila Chiki Chiki” is a rap reggaton that includes reference to politicians and to grandmothers waving knickers in the air as they dance the “chiki chiki”. Go Spain!

The word is that our Spanish chiki chiki will only face competition from Ireland’s rubber turkey puppet Dustin. The contest this year in on May 24 in Belgrade.

Tell us your most horrible travel moment, and win a copy of Chuck Thompson’s “Smile When Yoy’re Lying”

by Justin Glow on

In case you missed it, Abha recently interviewed Chuck Thompson, author of the new book, Smile When You’re Lying, and we’re running a contest to give away some free copies. It’s really easy to enter to win — just tell us the worst thing that’s happened to you while traveling in the comment section of the interview. You don’t need to write a novel or anything, but the funnier/more outrageous, the better! We’ve already got some good stories from our readers. Here’s one:

On being sick in India, Eva writes, “I was so out of it, I genuinely thought I was dying. For two days I just lay in my bed and cried, and then got mad at myself for wasting bodily fluids on tears when I was clearly already dying of dehydration, and then I cried even harder. I even called my dad to say goodbye!”

Fun!

Let the world hear your worst travel moment, and you just may win a copy of Smile When You’re Lying! (Remember: don’t leave the comment on this post! Go here instead.)

Reminder: Win a free copy of The Geography of Bliss

by Justin Glow on

Just a quick reminder: head over to Leif’s review of the new book, The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, to win a free copy. Here’s a sneak peak of his review:

A confessed “mope”, Weiner (coincidentally pronounced ‘whiner’ – ki ki ki!) admits straight off that he’s a hard sell on happiness. You’d be too after two decades working as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, reporting on wars, disasters and the ancillary misery. Untold years of introspection, therapy and a metric ton of self-help books have yielded little progress and having recently entered the Heart Attack Years, he confesses that his happiness attainment optimism is flagging.

For the rest of the review, along with all the details you need to have a free copy of the book under your tree this year, click here. But be quick about it; the contest ends this Friday, December 7 at 5PM EST.