Microsoft Live Club, playing for charity and prizes

[Guest]

.

[Soriak]

If you sign up for the Microsoft Live Club and play their free games (a few letters and you have to find words), you get rewarded with tickets. One ticket is worth 1c and can either be traded in for rewards or be donated to charity. One game gets you 20 tickets and you can play 50 or so games per day. That's $10/day per person. Once a year, Microsoft will bundle the money raised for a charity and donate it.

You can sign up at http://club.live.com
Once logged in, click "select your preferred charity" and search for Kiva. There's more than one, make sure you select "Kiva Microfunds" (it mentions kiva.org in the description) You can set the percentage of how much to donate, in case you wish to keep some tickets for yourself. If you're really patient, you can get an xbox360, Vista Home Premium, or Office 2007 for 20k-25k :p

Of course you don't have to do much thinking yourself, here's a website to do the de-scrambling for you. You just have to enter what it finds
http://www.thewordfinder.com/scrabble.php


Anytime you enter a word combination, it executes a search for that term. Yes, Microsoft is actually paying people to use their search engine...

[DanaLi]

I love the live search club. So far I've gotten 1,247 tickets which is $10.47 for Kiva and $2 for CAI( I really liked 3 Cups of Tea). I like to play Clink which only gets you 10 tickets per game but I like it and I'm a lot better at it then those other games. While I can't play like 50 games in a row just a few a day add up. So Join! It's fun!
Dana

P.S. Think about all that time we spent on Vote4cause trying to raise just a little money. This way, you make a lot more money for the charity of your choice for a lot less time.

[Canadian Here]

I love the live search club. So far I've gotten 1,247 tickets which is $10.47 for Kiva and $2 for CAI( I really liked 3 Cups of Tea). I like to play Clink which only gets you 10 tickets per game but I like it and I'm a lot better at it then those other games. While I can't play like 50 games in a row just a few a day add up. So Join! It's fun!
Dana

P.S. Think about all that time we spent on Vote4cause trying to raise just a little money. This way, you make a lot more money for the charity of your choice for a lot less time.

Dana:
Joined last night and been playing a lot. So much in fact, I can't win anymore tokens until tomorrow. I reached the max for the day!
Lorna

[DanaLi]

Wow, I've never reached the max(yet). Good for you  Thanks for posting this because I hadn't played in a while and this reminded me to go over there.

Dana

[Sherri]

DanaLi, How did you add more than one charity?

Wow, this is really cool (and kinda pathetic that MS has to pay people to search!). We should organize a Kiva Friends drive to see who can earn the most tickets in say one week (for Kiva) and post the top ten here on the board. Friendly competition never hurt... and this seems much more effective than vote4cause...

[DanaLi]

Sherri,
When you first add a charity you can add any one you like(as long as it is in the system). Once you have added a charity you can switch or take off your charity at anytime by going to your club acount and clicking on the "change charity settings" button below your icon. Although you can't give to 2 charities at the same time you can switch back and forth between charities as often as you like.

Dana

[Soriak]

You can also donate already collected tickets to a charity, just click on "get prizes". If you want to split them equally between two, just set it so it automatically donate 50% to one charity and donate the remaining tickets manually to the other(s).

[DanaLi]

I want to let everyone know that there is a new geography/triva game on live search club called Matt Lauer. IT IS AN INCREDIBLY FAST WAY TO EARN MONEY! Each game is worth 20 cents(if you get them all right) and it only consists of 4 questions. I can litterly play the game in less then 2 minutes and that is if I think about the answers. This is a reminder to go play and earn money for kiva. I don't have the money to donate so this is how I give my 10% of each loan plus some. It is a great alternative for those who have only enough to lend. 
Dana

[Tomcat]

Yes, I've been playing the geography quiz game this week and built up a few tickets for Kiva. It seems the fastest way to me, and is informative and entertaining.

I like the idea of a Kivafriends contest to see who can make the most for Kiva in a week. It would be a lot more productive for Kiva than all the time we spent on vote4cause.

[Diane R]

I'm quite good at geography quizzes and popped over to the link to sign up, but it's forcing me to give MSN my birthdate, industry, and other info, and to agree to two long agreements which appear to be authorizations to send things to my email, which I don't want.

Do I need to create this MSN account in order to play?  If so.... hmm.... sorry, I probably won't be feeling up to handing over that much info to the Redmond Empire.  Is there any alternate way to participate?

--Diane.

[Sherri]

Diane, most people give fake information to these types of inconsequential account signups. I have never given my real birthdate, name or address to anything other than my online bank or other service providers I know and trust. Even then, I have only ever given my real birthdate to my bank.

The idea that MSN needs this info is laughable. They only want you to create an account so that they can track your searches and provide you with targeted advertising. I would advise to never give details this personal to an account which is just for fun. Especially given the growing occurrences of company's servers being hacked or harddrives of personal data stolen. Just make something up.

It's also advisable to create a free gmail/yahoo/hotmail email address that you just use for this kind of thing- so that you won't get spam to your MAIN email address.

Yes, a little paranoid, but with good reason (oh the stories I could tell!). 

[Soriak]

Additionally to what Sherri said, you could also use an e-mail "account" from www.mailinator.com

It's great to sign up for sites where you don't want to hear from again. You make up an e-mail address of your choice and just enter that in the form. Then you go to mailinator and type in the address you used and you can access the e-mails sent to it. Of course that means so can everyone else, so never use it for things that contain personal information... but it's nice for registrations like this

[Canadian Here]

Diane, most people give fake information to these types of inconsequential account signups. I have never given my real birthdate, name or address to anything other than my online bank or other service providers I know and trust. Even then, I have only ever given my real birthdate to my bank.

The idea that MSN needs this info is laughable. They only want you to create an account so that they can track your searches and provide you with targeted advertising. I would advise to never give details this personal to an account which is just for fun. Especially given the growing occurrences of company's servers being hacked or harddrives of personal data stolen. Just make something up.

It's also advisable to create a free gmail/yahoo/hotmail email address that you just use for this kind of thing- so that you won't get spam to your MAIN email address.

Yes, a little paranoid, but with good reason (oh the stories I could tell!). 

I'll bet, Sherri...
Anyway, having a bit of trouble with the MSN site. Not giving me the points at the end of the game. It claims that there is "no connection to the server" (NOT true) and the points I've won revert back to "zero".
So, if you decide not to participate, I can't say I blame you.
Lorna

[Tatiana]

I want to let everyone know that there is a new geography/triva game on live search club called Matt Lauer. IT IS AN INCREDIBLY FAST WAY TO EARN MONEY! Each game is worth 20 cents(if you get them all right) and it only consists of 4 questions. I can litterly play the game in less then 2 minutes and that is if I think about the answers. This is a reminder to go play and earn money for kiva. I don't have the money to donate so this is how I give my 10% of each loan plus some. It is a great alternative for those who have only enough to lend. 
Dana

For some reasons I always have troubles with my microsoft passport. But today I finally managed to log in. Indeed this Matt Lauer game is great fun and it goes incredably fast! Only today I earned over $10 for Kiva. I am not allowed to continue today, but count on me to come back tomorrow

[Canadian Here]

Indeed this Matt Lauer game is great fun and it goes incredably fast! Only today I earned over $10 for Kiva. I am not allowed to continue today, but count on me to come back tomorrow

There aren't many questions for this game. I went through them ALL over a week ago. They haven't added any new ones.    I'm not allowed to play this game anymore because I've done them all.
BAD organization...no updates to the site!
Lorna