A Winner

With no beating around the bush, the winner of the banner competition is Cheeryoscuro with The Joy of Dogs. We were able to watch this shot take an early lead and stay in front throughout the voting process, although Cloudscape from jukkakos threatened a surprise comeback at one point, getting quite close before the winner pulled away again. It was so exciting that it felt a shame not to be able to share it with you. The final difference was 30% to 27% of the total vote. 

More difficult was the job we took upon ourselves to select from the blips and words you provided to promote the ethos of blip in the public facing page of the site. In the final reckoning, the chosen ones were:

dfb24 ... I blip to record the beauty I see around me everyday

Dogwithnobrain ... I blip to celebrate everything about life    

strangledduck ... I blip to see my life through a different lens    

JDO ... I blip to encourage me to go to places I haven't been to before   

Justtryin ... I blip to help me see familiar things in unfamiliar ways    

Shutterup ... I blip to share a smile     

WharfedaleBex ... I blip to save the moments that melt away   

We've designed the page and it will hopefully be up live and marketing the site soon. Thanks to everyone who voted and contributed. We've noted comments about having rolling images, which is certainly a good idea. We'll look to explore options to showcase a wider variety of banner images when we can.

Just one more thing. We inherited a bit of computer kit when we took over the site, some of which we were able to find buyers for. We thought you would like to know that the rest, no longer having any significant market value, has recently been donated to the Turing Trust. This charity reuses computers to help bring African schools into the digital world and promote equal opportunity for African students. The Trust, founded by Alan Turing’s closest family, believes that bridging the digital divide in Africa is a truly fitting way to honour his remarkable legacy. If you too have any old or redundant IT equipment, you might want to consider a donation yourself.

Congratulations again to Cheeryoscuro and all our finalists and other winners.