contests

Cisco certification product giveaway winners

Congratulations to our Cisco certification product giveaway winners:

• Sailingswede
• Kuroiinu
• ITM
• Jimbarino
• Mukul
• Smasiello
• Maji
• Indytex1
• Criggl001
• B3nny0

And thank you all for participating! You may have noticed that two extra winners made the list. This was because SearchNetworking.com’s IT career and training expert, Ed Tittel, wanted to pitch in the two extra CCENT 640-822 Network Simulators left over from his previous contest: Cisco Press Supplies the Prizes, I Decide Who Gets Them!

Like his previous contest, Ed got to decide who our contest winners were. If you’d like to know how he decided, here was his method and message to all seeking certification:

Dear contestants,

I alphabetized the list of names, then rolled dice to randomly walk the list of unselected names to pick the winners. If you don’t like the results, please rail against the laws of probability, not me!

What I noticed in the commentary from everybody is a renewed focus on the technical side of work, and a desire to improve upon your skills and knowledge bases. If you keep this up, it may not make much difference in the short run while our economic crisis works its way through the financial and other systems. But in the long run, self-improvement nearly always leads to improved employment situations and circumstances as well. Good luck with your exams, and with your career development paths.

Best wishes,
Ed Tittel

Cisco certification product giveaway

In light of Cisco’s Unified Computing announcement — and to coincide with the wrap-up of IT career and training expert Ed Tittel’s Cisco Press giveaway, we thought now would be the perfect time to run yet another Cisco certification contest. In the event you missed Ed’s contest, there is still time (until April 1) to redeem yourself.

As it is the first day of spring, SearchNetworking.com would love to spring for your certification training material to help you in these tough economic times.

What type of material, you ask?

Six CCENT 640-822 Network Simulators

Two CCNA Security 640-553 Cert Flash Cards Online

Since these network simulators and flashcards are online, this means we can finally open up our contest to SearchNetworking.com members outside of the United States!

As IT Career JumpStart blogger, Ed Tittel, writes In today’s job market, prospective employers want it all:

An abundance of candidates to choose from means that employers can become extremely selective about whom they’ll bring on board to fill open positions…That means advanced degrees, serious certifications, and lots of direct relevant experience are what it takes to get through the door and on board these days.

If you find yourself lacking in any of these areas, now’s the time to go to school, keep working (or volunteering if you don’t have work), and start adding certifications to your resume. And we would like to do everything in our power to aid you with the certification process.

If you can follow these two steps, you can qualify to win the Cisco certification product of your choosing.

First: Post to our blog (by clicking on the “comment” link at the bottom of this post) with responses to the following 5 questions:

1. What is your job title (if you are a student or not working just write “full-time student” or “unemployed”)?
2. If applicable, what type of business do you work for?
3. What TechTarget websites do you use?
4. What do you use that site for?
5. What are your biggest work-related challenges?

Second: After you post your entry, send us an email so that we can contact you if you win. Make sure to include:

1. Your blog comment username
2. Your exam of interest (either the 640-822 or 640-553, but not both, please)

We’re giving you until midnight of April 1 to respond. Contest winners will be chosen by Ed Tittel who will guest post for us on April 2 with the contest results.

Good luck to all, and thanks for participating!

‘Get with the Programmer’ contest seeks hottest tech guy

Are you the Romeo of routing? The Orlando Bloom of the OSI model? Here’s your chance to shine…

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Daily Candy is running a contest to find the “hottest tech dude in all the land.” Since we’d like to see that award (justly) go to a networking pro, we couldn’t resist posting the link for you in the Network Hub. Theoretically, nominations are supposed to come from ladies who subscribe to Daily Candy’s newsletters (which promote shopping, dining and travel items of interest). But any toothsome techie worth his salt should be able to figure out a way around that.

In addition to bragging rights, both the winner and the person who nominates him will receive an HP Mini 1000 XP edition series netbook with an upgraded 60 GB hard drive.

Win this book: ‘Build Your Own Security Lab: A Field Guide for Network Testing’

nbsp;SearchNetworking.com’s very own security expert, Michael Gregg, has written another book: Build Your Own Security Lab: A Field Guide for Network Testing.

This how-to book not only gives you real-world scenarios you’ll actually be able to relate to, but the materials you’ll need to create your own test lab: It comes with a CD-ROM featuring security and hacking tools as well as open source tools, demo software, and a bootable version of Linux.

As security should never be last on the network administrator’s task list — we want to give our readers an opportunity to win this book for free. We have 10 copies of Michael Gregg’s book to give away to IT professionals in the United States. (Sorry, we cannot ship books outside the country.) Just go to our Build Your Own Security Lab giveaway two-question survey, and tell us if you’ve ethically hacked your network. Submitting your response will enter your name into our random drawing which will be held on November 1st. This means you have until the end of October to submit your entry.

If you miss your chance to enter, or don’t win a copy — never fear! You can still download Chapter 9 of Build Your Own Security Lab, Securing Wireless Systems — which starts you off with basic wireless know-how and goes on to explain how to ethically hack and secure your wireless systems with various networking tools. Since we all live different lifestyles, this chapter is downloadable as a PDF or as a podcast for when you’re on the go.

Do you like this offer? Let us know — or feel free to suggest any other books you’re on the lookout for that we could help you get for free.

Have Cisco pay YOU for a change

After all the money you’ve diverted from your (enterprise’s) coffers, don’t you deserve a little something back? I mean, your requisition orders must pay the salaries of at least a few marketing types, sales types, and even a few engineers, so a kick back is the least they could give you.

Well, you’ve got your chance as Cisco continues moving from providing dumb pipes to selling services and solutions. BusinessWeek has the scoop on Cisco’s I-Prize contest, which will award $250,000 to a team of innovators and entrepreneurs for their idea, with up to $10 million in funding set aside to potentially staff, develop, and market a business based on the idea.

If you’re sick of ho-hum tasks and pointy-haired bosses, this could be your ticket out. And while entries are closed for this year’s contest, there’s always next year or one of dozens of similar contests, as Business Week reports:

Cisco’s innovation contest is one of at least a dozen corporate-sponsored competitions that have cropped up in recent years, all aimed at developing and rewarding innovation. Microsoft (MSFT), for instance, annually awards its $25,000 Imagine Cup to a student team that best uses technology to solve a real-world problem. Using money to reward technological innovation is hardly novel; historians say one of the first innovation prizes dates to 1714, when the British government offered £20,000 to the person who could devise a method for determining a ship’s longitude. (The prize was officially awarded 59 years later.)

Hey, if a Canadian steamfitter and a German student assistant can make it to finalist status, what’s stopping you? If you’re not quite ready for that 180 degree career change, there are other opportunities to give your networking career a jolt.

One quick method: Enter to win Cisco Press’ CCNA Official Exam Certification Library. We’ve got 10 copies to give away to 10 lucky readers. See contest details for a chance to win.

Internetwork Expert is sponsoring a Real CCIE’s, Real People 2008 Scholarship, where the winners (one U.S. and one international award will be given) will receive:

• CCIE Self-Paced End-to-End Program
• Complete CCIE Rack Rental package compliments of Graded Labs
• Onsite Bootcamp of the recipients choice (including airfare, hotel, provisions, and ground transportation).

Not bad, but hurry up: The contest is over in 3 days!

Further Reading:

• Cisco’s I-Prize homepage
• Real CCIE’s, Real People 2008 Scholarship, via CCIE Pursuit
• SearchNetworking.com’s career news and tips landing page

How sexy is your network diagram?

What, you don’t know a precise number? Then get over to RateMyNetworkDiagram.com and find out exactly how pretty your peers think your network diagram is on a sliding 1-10 scale. It’s HotOrNot.com for the networking set.

My favorite diagram overlaid the components and locations over an outdoor picture of the building, although another which explained Godzilla’s position in the network was helpful when planning my home setup.

Speaking of which, you can browse and rank diagrams by size and purpose: Small, Large, Home, Rack, and Funny are all options, so no matter what your need you can find a little diagram inspiration … or at least a laugh or two.

Via Cisco blog.

Win an iPod shuffle — no joke!

Yesterday was April 1, better known in U.S. office culture as April Fool’s Day. Internet news pranks abounded, including the sighting of a Steve Jobs slime mold. On SearchNetworking.com, Michael Morisy revealed how Cisco was re-thinking Layer 8 networking with “green” components — in other words, replacing poorly functioning end users with efficient T-series robots. Check out what he says about Al Gore.

 8-bit tie prank was such a hit that now it’s a real product!) launched a handful of what I can only assume are spurious products, including the Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt, which “features a working speaker on the front and can play background music and sound effects at your command,” including “exciting chase music” for walking your dog.

So maybe you can’t (yet) buy a T-shirt to provide a personal soundtrack. But you could get an iPod shuffle, upload all your favorite music, clip the iPod on your 8-bit tie, and head to work. In no time you could be plugging in cables to the Peter Gunn theme… sneaking through the server room with some pizzicato strings… opening up a malfunctioning server with P-Funk’s “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)”… tossing back a cold Red Bull to some Twisted Sister… Well, you get the picture.

Suppose you don’t want to shell out for the iPod. Well, then… Take a look at the IT Knowledge Exchange’s April iPod contest. They’ll enter you in a drawing to win an iPod shuffle just for linking to them (see full details in their blog). And that’s no joke!