Game, Set, Match – Winner!
I want to thank everyone for helping me win the Ruff PC laptop. Voting has ended and I have won with 116,930 votes. TechTreak tried a huge comeback yesterday and actually overtook me for a while but in the end, his cheating didn’t work.
How Did TechTreak Cheat?
Many people were asking if TechTreak was cheating. It seem amazing that a blog with less than 200 RSS readers can get so many votes. What TechTreak did was embed the URL that Polldaddy used to register a vote into his site. You can see a screenshot of his codes here (Thanks to Justin for the detective work). Anyone visiting the TechTreak site ended up voting for him whether they want to vote or not.
That wouldn’t be enough to win because TechTreak simply doesn’t have the traffic to register enough votes. So, he started embedding the cheat across his network of sites. By the time I went to check the results last night, he was ahead by over 10,000 votes.
At that point, I got pissed. I spent a lot of time trying to win this contest honestly. I got Shoemoney and many other webmasters to post about it, I advertised it, I sent out a newsletter to all my subscribers, etc. Then to have this little cheater come along and try to steal the contest.
In the end, it didn’t really matter because he still lost. Then again, everyone was expecting him to lose. What he might not have been expecting was to be exposed. TechTreak’s about page lists a bunch of contest that he’s won (by cheating, no doubt). Too bad he won’t be able to add a Ruff PC to the list. 
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- Problogger John Chow Wins First Rugged Ruff PC Contest « The Rugged Notebooks Blog™ - January 4, 2008 at 11:29 am
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that last minute surge can’t beat out the mighty john chow
well done, John!
That guy just got owned
Kudos to you and Justin
Why John does not reply on how he got votes?
Does he take advantage All TTZ Media Trusted Websites and Blogs. Are we safe in TTZ Media if John does like this for his use? How this will effect on us?
This Techtreak guy is really lame, I hope he’ll never win anything again.
Congratulations for winning the laptop John!
It appears nothing can beat John Chow
~ Dave
congrats on the new laptop
He’s giving it away though remember.
Yes, he said so in his post. Why is he taking all his time to announce the laptop winner among his over 100 thousand voters.
Actually, he doesn’t have the choice from 100 thousand voters unfortunately
The original post states..
“cast a vote for me and then leave a comment here so I know you voted. Hopefully, we’ll have enough votes to enter the final round. Then we’ll pull out all the stops in the final round and one lucky reader will take that laptop home!”
which I believe means one of the original voters who actually said they had voted in the comments will win, I doubt polldaddy provides a way to track and contact each of their voters.
At least you can admire the evil nature of TechTreak, but he chose to dance with the devil and lose.
Good work JC.
John, congratulation! You win. And I am proud of you that you win honestly
! Who is the winner of your contest for giving out the laptop you just win?
Frances
Comeon Frances Lui, where were you?
No one is honest here. 
Both, Cheated but John learned from TechTreak how to cheat! 
The evil here is famous TTZ media is xused for this dumb thing. 
Well done you deserved it
Sweet now you can give me the laptop now right? Anyway great job getting that prize and nice that you give it away to someone!
Free Samples
Free TV?
Good for you John. Being “evil” does not mean cheating. It means being opportunistic, creative, and hard working. Like John.
I don’t think TechTrek really cheated. I think it’s more being resourceful like you mentioned. If you’re up against a giant like John, you have to use some gorilla tactics. Exploiting a weakness in the voting system is just smart in my book.
Does that mean that TechTrek’s blacker than John Chow’s?!!
That might true if he won.
Yeah, TTZ Media is missused for winning this contest.
It is not fair on how TTZ Media being used in this way. 
I think he cheated. I went to check out his blog and had no intention of voting for him, but I did just by visiting. I’d say that’s a cheat.
Like I said above, I think it’s definitely an exploitation but there are no ground rules. I mean I’m willing to bet people voted for John more than once by clearing their cache or from a different comp etc. If there had been rules then it might have been cheating but there weren’t.
It depends on how you interpret this situation. Indeed, he wasn’t breaking any rules since there were none, but, on the other hand, having every visitor vote for him without letting them know is not exactly fair
Alan Johnson
Yes Alan Johnson, I agree with you , my doubt has John Chow did make us vote for him with out knowing? How he got 1 lakh votes?
Who would clear their cache and vote for John 2 or 3 or 4 or more times? Not me!
Congrats John
Nice job John, it was clear that the guy was up to something fishy, but in the end, things unfolded as everyone expected them to.
Alan Johnson
Lol, so funny. Glad he didn’t win it. I would be pissed too. What’s hilarious is how he wants people to think that he accumulated 45 THOUSAND votes, yet in many of the posts on his blog, he doesn’t have a single comment
What could he say if he does that.
If he is honest that he might say something.
He did accumulate 45 thousand votes. It just wasn’t necessarily 45 thousand people knowingly voting for him
I don’t think he cares whether people knew or not
He just wanted to win.
Even though I was misled to that voting page, I knew who would win! Congrats!
Congrats.. Honesty is always the best policy!
Wow. That’s some scam. It should be noted that cheating, especially for a new blog pretty much never works in the blogosphere, and gets you a bad name. Especially when it’s against John Chow.
There’s no such thing as bad press.
Congrats John, now how do I enter for the drawing again?
Well done on winning the laptop, now hand it over!
No doubt this is probably how he got through to the second round as well. Otherwise, this wouldn’t have even been a competition vs the other sites listed.
Nice John, It’s really not a huge top 5. The other competitors was short of 100k votes lol
So you beat the cheater by cheating yourself and applying the same method of cheating?
These voting systems are nearly always exploited when theres a prize up for grabs and evidently this one has become a farse with 99% of the votes coming from people that didnt even know they had voted.
Shame really, but thats the internet i suppose.
Don’t be ridiculous. I would never apply a cheat that was so easy to detect!
Given the fact that his blog is new, any person with at least an ounce of common sense has realized that he couldn’t have obtained that many votes by playing fair.
Alan Johnson
So you hid the code on some of your TTZ pages instead of the blog then?
It would be contraversial to give the laptop to the person you came 3rd and had all real votes. But could set a good precendent.
But hey, that aint gonna happen so ill enter your contest and try and win that laptop
.
That would probably be hard to detect since he can put it on for a while and then take it off
Then? What you did to get the votes? A bigger cheat?
John that was not cheating that was just “evil” hahaha NOT.
Why would you get pissed tasting your own medicine?
Congratz John,
Maybe he tought “John is Evil, can I be more Evil?”
But cheating to be more evil is just plain lame.
You certainly deserved the win!!!
Why don’t you try win other poll’s also, you allready have a marvelous community backing you up. And you can give away even more stuff then you’re allready doing!
You certainly got my vote.
John Chow for President
Why is it when John pulls something like this (or Shoemoney) that it’s evil but when a little guy does it, he’s just a cheat? Give me a break people!
Expecting integrity should be the norm but it’s not yet, glad you caught the bugger at his game.
John, the 300×250 “blogging to the bank” advertisers site should be looked into. I regularly see what advertisers have to offer but I hate having my browser hijacked like that ad does. I looked over his sales copy, decided I wasn’t interested and tried to leave the site only to get repeated pop ups that stop me from leaving by asking more and more questions. I ended up just closing my browser and erasing cookies as a precaution.
Congrats John…
I new that TechTreak had something fishy going around… I don’t now but a really had a weird felling about those results that he was having and that somehow he was cheating…
Just to let you know, I voted, and a couple of my friends also voted on you too… hope you don’t mind
It would be wonderful if I was offered that laptop
Hope you choose the right reader of your blog to give away that prize
oh, and by the way, I entered you contest from the beginning, so that means I could be the one winning that laptop… YAY
Good work john.
Congratulations! I saw the closed poll when I viewed it on my own blog earlier. Nice work!
getting outed and losing = double loss lol
Yeah, if you’re going to be sneaky, either win, or don’t get caught. Both = best.
hmmm a impersonator =P
Congrats! Such a big shame about the cheating. Oh well, at least he got exposed.
At least he got a big traffic boast from this
In a few weeks no one will remember that he cheated probably 
I just came here to vote for John and read this topic
I’m glad to see you won
I just wonder why do people cheat
…
Anyways … congrats
John,
What did you do to get so many votes in the last 24 hours? Congrats on winning, I’m looking forward to the drawing.
It’s only called cheating if you get caught
Congrats John, I voted for you and commented on your post before but I don’t see my comment show up
Congratulations John! You deserve to win that PC!
it somehow takes out my name
MUHAHAHA
victory.
So you cheated too?
Comeon nickycakes, where are you?
TTZ media is missed used. Jhon too cheated as TechTreak did.
congratulations john.You worked hard and i was sure that your readers will help u win this pc.
Thanks John for fighting so hard to give that computer away to one of us.
I just looked at his blog. It sucks. No wonder he has to cheat.
Way to go John for winning the Ruff Laptop! All that’s left to do is send it to me.
Way to go John111
Way to go John!!!
Congrats John, Ruff PC laptop Rocks!!!
Excellent! John! I envy you!
So, when are you going to give away your laptop? 8-P ha!
Yup he’s going to send it my way
Congrats.
Never fails. People keep trying to game the system.
if anything else, he got some free publicity from john chow…guerilla marketing at its finest
“if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re not doing something right”
Good job! John.
Alrighty, can’t wait to get my hands on my new laptop!
Ethics aside (which is where ethics usually end up these days). I’d say he got his monies worth and then some, out of this contest! I’ve heard there’s no such thing as bad publicity….
I’m just glad he didn’t win the lap top as well.
Kind of reminds me of the contest between you and Shoemoney a bit, although that one seemed a bit more legit then this one did.
Congrats on the win! Too bad others would cheat like that!
Make sure that Mubin Wins the laptop as promised now
That was private information
He totally pwned everyone.
Hopefully whatever method John uses to award the laptop to a reader here is cheat proof lol.
you nailed him on the head john..
congrats John!
Way to go John!
Congratulations
Congragulations !… keep it up
If you want to see wat happen within 9-5 jobs, check this HILARIOUS video -:)
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-abs
A 100k votes! Wow!!! Nice job on exposing the cheater!
I’d love to be able to win that notebook!
I knew he was cheating. Common Techtreak has alexa of 200,000+ and that is about below 50 unique visitors per day ONLY LOL
Alexa is inaccurate
He might have 50 people or 500. I know a site that gets 2000 uniques a day that is ranked 180,000. it all depends on the niche since many people don’t have the alexa toolbar.
Good job
Do I win the laptop now?
Congrats John…
So, John u forgot the moral & followed him..
He is not a cheat, I dont accept vth u as u said coz there are no such rules on the way he does.. 
. he got votes from his visitors only & not any unwilling votes… he deserves those votes… he fought like a warrior… He will sure have a good future though he eneded up defeating in the hands Mighty now….
Anyhow Cool Tactics…
Actually, his visitors have “voted” for him without knowing. It cannot be considered 100% cheating, since there were no rules about such an approach, but still…
I never doubted you for a second, Johnny
Forgot Onething What are the ways you used to get the ways
Please, let us know Jhon…
I guess his cheats got discovered and congrats for winning the laptop.
John Where is my comment ? Is my comment deleted ?
Please, let us know what are the ways you used to win this laptop ?! 
Its mentioned quite clearly in the post Gemini..
No, It is possible even for John Chow to get 1 lakh votes in such a span of time, he might too did the same ( in John’s words ‘cheat’ ) and exposed the other as cheat… The really story is not yet unreveiled ….
Congrats on the win, John! That’s awesome that you beat that guy without cheating. Good for you! Ya had my vote (out of many!)
Hey! Roberta, you are wrong. John Chow Did Cheat , to win this contest. Once, look at the numbers in the polls..
TTZ media Publisher sites has been miss used in getting votes … 
Congrats John
-Mike
WAAAAHHH!!!! I’M JOHN CHOW ME WANT LAPTOP YOU CHEAT I WIN BECAUSE I BETTER THAN U! NOT FAIR! BUT I WIN ANYWAY BECAUSE MY SPAMMY BLOG IS BETTER THAN URS!
And the laptop goes to ….. ?
me
Like the guy whose comments were not shown, something odd is happening here. Um, that’s not my avatar. I haven’t put one up.
dont forget our agreement on the laptop. 6 months at your house then 6 months with me.
but seriously good win and hope the winner enjoys it.
he just wasn’t quite
enough.
and the remaining years??… will be at my desk..
Congrats John, we are waiting for to find out who is the lucky winner.
How does the contest looks like? Lucky draw??
Way to go on exposing this guy! Congrats on winning.
Good work John! Congrats on winning!
Congrats John.
Congrats John! I had no doubt you’d win, since you know how to leverage your resources and get the word out about the contest.
Here’s my 2 cents on the cheating thing. I don’t feel it was wrong of John to use the TTZ simply because in the end, it was still MY choice who I voted for. I feel John was just using resources at his disposal, but he never took away my right to choose where my vote went.
On the other hand, TechTreak took away my voice by forcing my vote to go to his site. That is cheating, no matter how you look at it. And I refuse to visit a site that would stoop to such tactics and disregard my ability and right to make my own decisions.
Congrats John ( and TTZ )!!!
Michelle S. : Check your site it has some error..
We don’t care if TTZ Media Network is used in this ! What we want is where is Laptop John? LOL
The problem is will you give it someone Lucky? Who is lucky in those 116930 votes will they be third party visitors from TTZ blogs & websites or JC voters?
pick me =)
Congrats!
Congrats, John that is a way cool prize and then to re-gift it is even better.
I’m still wondering: who – among the voters – will win?
About the name calling and skepticism. I think such should be avoided. Let’s keep comments good and sound so it can be a joy to read comments. If anyone grumps about anything, remember a smiley in occasional places….
Who finally won the laptop?
John, congratulations.
I hope I helped a litle. I had more than 2000 visits in 2 weeks on my new blog and I hope the most vistors voted for you.
2000 is for me great. last year I had about 2000 visits in few (Agloco) blogs .
Hm! what about notebook – who will get it?
Congrats bud!
John Chow Dot Com rocks man! This is one site where a single post looks much bigger than the index page because of those huge no of comments it has!!
Enjoy your hard earned Rufff PC.
Psst. Even I voted!!
I’m just glad I could I could help with the win
I agree. This Techtreak guy is really lame, I hope he’ll never win anything again.
This is one site where a single post looks much bigger than the index page because of those huge no of comments it has!! Congrats bud!
John Chow Dot Com rocks man!
Pretty f’ed up how he cheated… so when you giving it away?
When are you giving this thing away? I need a laptop.
Big HELLO John
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WHO WON THAT RUFF PC????
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