It's time for another Street Tech writing contest. This has proven to be a great way for us to allow Street Tech readers to have their say on the site, for us to find new talent, and for you to make a little scratch in the process! One of our most prolific contributors, Nate Heasley (bless his pointy little head), came to us through one of our writing contests.

Here's how it works: Pick a piece of hardware that you're passionate about, either because you love it or because you blew your hard-earned shekels on it and it's turned into little more than a high-tech door stop. Write a review no longer than 1,000 words and send it to us at this address. If we decide to use your submission as a proper review, we'll pay you US$50*. If not, it will go in the reader-review topic in Shop Talk, our discussion area. One person will get a first place prize which will include the $50 reviewer's fee, plus a Street Tech mug and T-shirt, a signed copy of Gareth's Jargon Watch book, and blog privileges for posting to Street Noise, our daily front page weblog.

Deadline for the contest is March 15, 2001. If we like your review enough to publish it, we may post it before the deadline, but we'll choose the grand prize winner and announce him or her on March 20th.

*NOTE: Unfortunately, we can't pay foreign contributors (don't ask us, hassle our accountant), so the contest is open to US contestants only.

The basic editorial approach we use is: "Write as if you're talking to an intelligent but uninformed friend." Go easy on the geekspeak while trying to communicate to both beginners and deep geeks alike. The style is simple: Rant about the stuff that sucks, rave about what doesn't. Be entertaining. Loose. Funny. Always informative.

Ask yourself: is this gizmo worth the money? Does it perform as advertised? What's the "out-of-box experience" like? Is it equal to its hype? How much technical knowledge is required? Think about your dear ol' mom and dad trying to get this gear up and running. How frustrating would it be for them? It's OK to review tech that's designed for high-end users, just make sure you point this out (or if the product is great for newbies, but inadequate for power users).

Read previous Street Tech reviews in the Archive to get some idea of the writing style, length and coverage we're looking for.

Note that by submitting your review to us, you're automatically giving us the non-exclusive right to use it on our site in perpetuity.

So what are you waiting for? Talk to us! Tell us about your hardware, regale us with stories of hardware beyond the hype.