Everyone heard about the Netflix Prize . The person or team to improve their recommendation system by certain requirements gets a Million bucks. Sounds great?

Well, we run Criticker:

We’ve always been a two-man team, without any funding or venture capital money, and completely unaffiliated with any other site. And couple of our users suggested to take part in the Netflix Prize. We looked into it and read their T&C and decided to sooo not take part. Since everything you submit to Netflix Prize goes over in their possession.

So 1 Millions sounds good but at the end Netflix paid $1 an hour in development and probably gained resources not related to make their recommendations better.

The New York Times has an interesting article – stating that a almost Netflix Prize winner has regrets.

We are very happy that we stood away from it and that we got to keep our simple but very effective movie recommendation algorithm.

Give us a try: Criticker

Everyone made it nicely into the new year? This was probably first day of New Year’s Eve to welcome the new year without a firework – NONE! Secretly I was hoping there was still going to be one but I had to be happy with couple of grapes I had to force down my throat! To be honest I spit out the first one and skipped right to the Cava !

But Valencia made up for the missing fireworks and started the new year with the biggest Mascleta (Sound Fireworks). Which got rid of my hangover! Watch the video here.

Movie fans and freaks perk your ears. On Criticker (your favorite movie recommendation site) we launched a sweet new feature. We introduced Movie Collections on Christmas Eve (which was a mistake since there were still tons of bugs) but response by our users were overwhelming.

Here couple of interesting collections:

• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
• 21st Century Top 250
• Modern Shakespeare adaptation
• Movies about making movies

Exciting – here now the first Reddit results of last week (You can still vote and move links up and down):

And here now the top 10 links of all – times (not too exciting yet since it’s the first week)

Wonder on how to get on these lists? It’s easy, fun and for free!

A total number of 18 people took part in iPod Nano raffle. The chance of winning was 5.5% which is not bad at all.

I accepted to answer for the amount of different colors of the Nano – on Amazon it’s 8 and on Apple.com 9 because of the special red one.

People found the most obscure things on our site Lastminute Auction, here just some:

1. Talking Middle Finger Lighter
2. Jack Black’s Beard Lube
3. Pink Guitar
4. Miniature Notebook and Kleenex Box
5. Townsend Fish Skinner
6. Bill Clinton Sex Dollar Bill

Not bad! Isn’t that not enough reason to visit Lastminute Auction where we list over 20,000 auctions at one dollar with only one hour left?

I also welcome our 18 new users to Criticker – Don’t forget to look up movies now to see if they are worth to you spending money on.

Sweet – I would say this raffle was a success!

Now – the winner of the Raffle is DAVE! Congratulations! I will email you asap asking for the color you would like and where to ship it. And if you didn’t win don’t be grim! I will have more raffles coming up promise and good thing Amazon has tons of them little Ipod Nanso for only $134 waiting for you.

Everyone who took part and left an URL to the site gets a little thank you … check out there fun sites:

• Sam from Fun Face Games
• Michael from Herogasm

That’s it !

Thank you for taking part and I hope you enjoyed this little raffle aka scavenger hunt from RGS to you.

- Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide

Christmas is just around the corner and a very successful year for Random Good Stuff will be coming to an end. So I thought I would send my beloved readers on a small scavenger hunt. For a free iPod Nano 8GB in the color of your wish. Everyone in the world can take part and if it’s not easy for me to order the iPod for you in your country you must have a Paypal account so I can transfer the price in dough ($134,94).

This competition will end on December 11th and I will the announce the ONE randomly chosen winner of the iPod Nano 8GB in a post the next morning. I will also thank everyone who took part with a link back but more about that in a second.

There are 4 things you need to do in order to earn one submission in the raffle – only one ticket per person. But feel free to tell your family and or friends if you feel like sharing this info.

Send the answers to questions #1 – #3 to this email address:”

1. How many different colors are available for the new iPod Nano 8G (4th Generation) at let’s say Amazon? Not sure? Well, this LINK might help!
2. Find a good bargain or something odd or funny on Lastminute Auction and take a screenshot of it and then sent it to the email above. You don’t need to buy it.
3. Love movies? Good! Because challenge number 3 is to sign up for an account at Criticker, and rank at least 10 films. Criticker is a great Film Recommendations Engine and Community, and once you get started using it, you might not want to stop. Send me your user name in the email.
4. Last point is the easiest. Just leave a comment with your biggest X-Mas wish for this year. Feel free to write something out or to link to any product you like. Don’t forget to enter the url of your site if you have one so I can link to you in the thank you post on RGS on the 12th. This will send you couple of new readers.

It’s not the easiest way to get your fingers on an iPod but still – it’s a free iPod!

If anything is unclear please leave a comment.

Now have fun with the scavenger hunt and good luck to you.