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Google, Sony team for 'Da Vinci Code' promotion
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Beginning Monday at 1pm EDT, Google will release one Da Vinci Code-style puzzle or riddle each day through May 11, and the last puzzle for finalists on May 19, the worldwide release date of the film.
While other Internet giants such as America Online, have typically used synergies with parent companies or other partners to create media promotions of this nature, this marks a significant move for Google.
According to Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez, this is the first time the search giant has ever done a cross-promotional venture tied to the film industry.
The film adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code," based on Dan Brown's best-selling historical-mystery novel, could give Google access to an entirely new base of users.
Participants must enter the contest through the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google Web site, and they must have a Google Gmail account and Google Homepage.
Participants must download the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google content module to their Homepage as part of contest registration. Each new puzzle will be directly linked to the user's Homepage and added to it each day at 1pm EDT.
Since the contest puzzles are time-sensitive, Da Vinci Code enthusiasts will be induced to visit their Google Homepage daily.
The first 10,000 participants who correctly solve all 24 daily puzzles and submit a puzzle completion form will be finalists. Finalists will win a replica of the cryptex described in Dan Brown's book and use the tool to compete in the final phase of the contest, another five time-sensitive puzzles.
The U.S. grand prize winner receives a first-class trip with three guests to each of the prominent locations featured in the movie: Paris, London, Rome and New York. The winner also receives a Sony Electronics package that includes a Bravia LCD television, Sony VAIO laptop, Sony Cyber-shot digital camera, NAV-U portable satellite navigation system, home theater system and four Walkman Core MP3 players.
Google and Sony are holding simultaneous contests for residents of the U.K. and Australia.
See more CNET content tagged:
contest, Google Inc., promotion, puzzle, Sony Corp.
51 comments
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24 days backwards from May 19? I'll guess not, or else, we may
have been given the information that MAKES SENSE, as opposed to
the gibberish in this write-up.
If everyone remembers that the Da Vinci Code is in the FICTION area of your bookstore we should be able to hack it...
Or are Christians going to go all 'Comic Strip'/'Prophet'/'Salman Rushdie' on the world?
--very next paragraph--
"they must have a Google Gmail account and Google Homepage."
Gmail is still invite only. Maybe I read it wrong, but I see little in access to new users.
I checked out the T&C and you DO need a Google Homepage but NOT a GMAIL.
Sure, the author gets off the hook by claiming "it's only fiction" but then proceeds to treat the material as if it's fact. FAR TOO MANY people are treating this book as a sort of expose', revealing the "truth" about the Catholic Church.
Only in an ignorant age such as today could a book like this confuse so many people. 100 years ago Dan Brown would have been booed off the stage.
Dan Brown certainly has at least some sympathies with the Gnostics, a heretical sect from the early centuries of Christianity. He is repeating many of their same lies in his book. It's not new -- this particular heresy is as old as the hills.
Sad to see that Google is promoting such a filthy work.
Matthew
The french can not even participate in a game about a movie which is situated in France for most of the time... sad...
turned to garbage
DVC is a book that is garbage as any sort of historical 'truth'.
(it's not a bad action thriller, however, once you get past the
badly flawed logic)
So it's appropriate that Sony and DVC join forces to become the
ultimate garbage collection and purveyor.
My condolences to Ron Howard and Tom Hanks who, with
others, got shackled into this mess. Sometimes, 'art for art's
sake' is a bad axiom.
turned to garbage
DVC is a book that is garbage as any sort of historical 'truth'.
(it's not a bad action thriller, however, once you get past the
badly flawed logic)
So it's appropriate that Sony and DVC join forces to become the
ultimate garbage collection and purveyor.
My condolences to Ron Howard and Tom Hanks who, with
others, got shackled into this mess. Sometimes, 'art for art's
sake' is a bad axiom.
religions such as Catholicism in the case of the "Da Vinci Code"!
Or Mohammed/Islam as a terrorist!
I wonder Why is that?
Now I am all for portraying all religions in as many negative light as possible, that is to criticize them freely, but why is it that the Big media only portrays other religions and their followers in negative lights and it never it portrays Judaism as being an evil/bad religion?
And why is it the Big media the moment someone opens their mouth to say something negative about Jews calls them "anti Semite" etc. while it (correctly) says that people have the right to say what they want when people criticize Islam or Catholics, etc.!
Why this amazing double standard!!!
Is it because Jews control the Big media in US & UK!
After all just look at Wall Street Journal, Washington post, Google, Yahoo, etc.
and you are 'anti-Semitic', guaranteed. Taking on the Israeli
political decisions with any sort of negative flavor makes you
anti-Semitic. And they are the ones who started the whole
jewish-christian-islamic fog of religion.
There's a fair chance that Jewish media control does set the tone
of the stories. If not true control, then it's effective control via
the loudest squacking......
They issue isn't Judaism vs everyone else (and that DOES qualify as anti-semitism). It's tranditionalists vs those who disparage traditionalism.
I think I'll wait for the chinese/russian pirate version on DVD, for that is about what it's real worth is, and not get sucked in with all PR hype and tripe!
Say even those turkeys, like Tom Cruise's "Mission Implausible III" or "Charlies Harpies at Full Throttle" would be funnier than this movie!
Oh well, let the rubbish and garbage that purports to be entertaining movies, continue to be released by that has been of a studio!
Then again, perhaps this movie would be cheaper than a bottle of sleeping pills to send one to sleep during the day!
Choices, can be rotten for some, for the adage, "the greater the hype, the crappier the movie!"
Human exsistence is nothing and everything. You take leaps and bounds on faith -- but no one is perfect. And this book reguardless that it is fiction is here merely to remind us that do not take everything face value from the church or for that matter the government. You have a brain so please use it and stop crying.