I'm giving away a Powermat induction charging system for the iPhone 3G/3Gs. It comes with an iPhone charging sleeve and a charging surface.

To enter this contest just reply to this thread. I'll be picking a random poster from this thread in a week.

Please only one entry per person, this contest is not open to HowardForum moderators.

NOTE: This contest has been running in the Apple forum since the 12th. Just wanted to let everyone know that it's ending tomorrow night, so if you haven't submitted an entry please do so before then for your chance to win.

Enter here

UPDATE: The contest is now closed and the winner will be announced soon.

So I was at the Eaton Center today (in Toronto) and figured I'd go to the TELUS, Rogers and Bell stores and ask the people there if people where buying Windows Phone 7 devices and just check out how high a profile the devices have in the stores.

First off I went to the TELUS store near the south side. There is an HTC Surround right in the middle of the entrance of the store. They were giving away 100 XBox 360's with WP7 purchase on Monday. Seems they sold around 50 or so WP7's on launch (and then MS came and took the rest of the XBox 360's away). The WP7's seem to be moving okay. They have plenty of stock of HTC Surrounds while they never had stock of the LG Optimus 7's.

Next I went to Bell. There is live LG Optimus Quantum that you can play with but it's off to the side and it was turned off. Actually both Bell stores were like this. They didn't seem to be pushing WP7 as much. One of the people there said they were selling okay. Some people were coming in wanting to buy them while others were steered towards them.

Next up was Rogers Plus. The first one (next to the south TELUS store) had a big lineup so I didn't want to wait. I looked around quickly and didn't see any mention of WP7. The Kiosk near the middle of the mall had someone I could talk to. The person told me that you can only get a WP7 device online at rogers.com and that retail wouldn't be getting anything until the end of the month.

I was about to leave when I decided to swing by Future Shop. I didn't see any WP7 displays or dummy devices. I also took a look at their stock (it was behind glass) and didn't see any WP7 phones. I'll grill some people next time I'm there.

Overall I was a little suprised Windows Phone 7 didn't have a higher profile. Part of this may be a lack of hardware - Rogers didn't have any Samsung Focus and there were no LG Optimus 7's available at TELUS. Another thing I noticed is that at least in Canada Microsoft is more interested in promoting the Kinect. There was a big bill board at Dundas Square plus they had a store across from the Eaton Center where you could try it.

On Friday HowardForums.com was the target of a DDOS attack. While the site experienced some downtime we were back after some countermeasures were put in place. Despite the countermeasures the attacks never actually stopped and have now changed.

As such the HowardForums.com search engine has been temporarily disabled. Sorry for any inconvenience.

In the meantime you can search HowardForums.com using Google like this:

site:howardforums.com search terms here

You may also receive log-in errors and the WAP site and Tapatalk support may be down. We are working to resolve these issues and appreciate your patience.

Because we know you might curious as to why we were down today, we wanted to pass on to you what happened.

Earlier today we were subjected to a denial-of-service attack called a "SYN flood" that took down our web servers for several hours. We were aware of it immediately after it happened, but it took a while to get everything back up and running.

I asked Howard for a statement and he had this to say:

If you're curious about what a SYN flood is, Wikipedia has an article about it here.

Humor aside, all of us at HowardForums apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

Forum member buster has been selected as the winner of our iPhone 4 giveaway. Please join us in offering congratulations.

Stay tuned for another giveaway soon (not for an iPhone).

Jonesing for an iPhone 4? We're giving away an unlocked iPhone 4 16GB, sealed in the box!

If you'd like to be entered into the drawing, please leave one comment to this post. The contest will run through Sunday and the winner will be selected randomly on Monday August 9th, with an announcement to follow sometime afterward.

The giveaway is open to residents of Canada and the United States only. If the winner is from Canada they must answer a skill testing question. Forum staff are not eligible for this giveaway. Duplicate entries will disqualify you.

Good luck!

P.S. While you're waiting, check out the story behind the two iPhones pictured.

UPDATE: We are no longer taking entries. The winner will selected later today. Thanks for participating and good luck!

UPDATE 2: The winner has been selected!