This is how things looked from my point of view:
Tuesday, towards the end, I had realized the possibility that Portal was the Purple bar in the voting results page. That meant, at the time, that I was in second. That alone made me have doubts. Then Kevin (Hijack) figured out he was Red and went into overdrive promoting the idea. I didn’t feel too bad, after all I considered Hijack one of my favorites.
Then, towards the last two hours, the Red bar began to make serious progress. Purple had slipped to third and every time I refreshed my browser, Red was that much closer. Then it happened. Purple fell to fourth. Red then passed Blue and claimed second place all to itself. I was now 40+ votes back.
After frantic calls to everyone I knew, plus cross-continental iChat sessions with college buddies, I thought I had secured about 10-15 more votes. Not enough, and I knew it. Going into the final minutes I had all my friends scared I had blown a fuse or something. I was a mess, so I went for a walk.
When I got back, everyone was in a holding pattern in the “Final Round Voting Closed” forum. 425 posts in under three hours or so. It was chaos. So I went and watched LOST. Chaos was still there when I got back.
I can’t remember exactly when I saw that the results where in, but I do know I was suspicious right away because it looked like Portal had made it through. “That’s impossible”, I thought. I was wrong. Voting irregularities had propelled me from the brink of elimination into second place. I still can’t believe it. Portal placed higher than Cookbook AND contributed to Hijack being pushed out of the top three.
To say I’m surprised would be an understatement. I’m in shock. I’m not a designer. I’m certainly not a programmer. I don’t even own a copy of Photoshop. Cookbook looks almost perfect. The GUI is clean and refined. Hijack had full-screen animated mockups for crying out loud!
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This brings me to my next point. I love Portal, it was always been my favorite app in this contest. I know I’m biased since its my idea, but what else do you honestly expect me to say? Still, there have been three other ideas I really liked: Ground Control, Hijack, and Cookbook. Cookbook is safe, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. GC and Hijack are in a different category: They still need developers to sign on! GC had a website going for it for a while and now Russell has added in a Blog to keep people on top of any progress. Hijack always had a following and now they seem to be self-organizing , even as Kevin gets some well deserved sleep. If either of these two ideas has any need for my modest skills, I’d gladly offer them, and I encourage the same from any diehard Portal supporters out there. Portal is in the loving, caring hands of MDA now, so attention can be turned to these other great app ideas.
That said, I’ll be taking some time off from this contest. Probably about a week. I’m on empty right now, and really, really need a vacation so I’m off to join Kevin on his secluded island of solitude in the Pacific. I’ll drop you a postcard. Thanks again!
