Ho ho holy crap we have big news to share. Starting December 1st, to help get everyone in the holiday spirit, we’ve paired with @NVIDIATegra to give away a fresh device every day until Christmas. We’re calling it The 25 Days of Tegra and it’s only for And Me Accounts. Still don’t have one? [...]]]>

Ho ho holy crap we have big news to share. Starting December 1st, to help get everyone in the holiday spirit, we’ve paired with @NVIDIATegra to give away a fresh device every day until Christmas. We’re calling it The 25 Days of Tegra and it’s only for And Me Accounts. Still don’t have one? You’ve still got a few days to join us.

Before we get to the gritty details, you should go bookmark the main 25 Days of Tegra page. There, you’ll find a calendar of devices that unlock each day, as if by magic, only to be snatched up by you, the loyal reader. To make sure we keep things interesting, and to further our search for the Android elite, we’ve dreamed up a number of challenges designed to reward our most trusted members.

Welcome to the proving grounds

What would the holidays be without a bit of healthy competition? I know you guys saw Jingle All the Way. We’re not going to make you tangle with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but we did think it would be fun to make some of the contests for power users only. That means that on some days, you’ll need a certain rank to participate.

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know we recently rolled out a system that scores your interaction on the site and tries to reward you for it. Users can score points in a number of ways, like leaving useful comments that are upvoted by other members of the community. Along with a reputation comes the perks, so we’ve set aside some devices just for users with a certain score. If you’d like to participate, sign up and start generating quality discussion today.

Like always, plenty of these prizes will be random and winnable by anyone, we just wanted to say thanks to our most active users for another solid year of Android merriment.

So what now?

Now we wait. At least until this Thursday, December 1st. That’s when the magic calendar will unlock and begin dropping devices all over the place. If you’d like to spread the cheer before then, you can use the tweetbox below to help us get the word out:

While we’re on the holiday topic, has Android made its way into your holiday gift plans? Is anyone on your list getting something from the land of Android? Leave us a comment below and we’ll work together to kill time like a couple of kids waiting for Chirstmas morning.

Last week we rolled out a a major update to our scoring system. Along with the points that we’ve had for months, we introduced a 1-100 scale that ranks your account in relation to other And Me Accounts on the site. After a week of close monitoring, we’re back with some exciting new scoring [...]]]>

Last week we rolled out a a major update to our scoring system. Along with the points that we’ve had for months, we introduced a 1-100 scale that ranks your account in relation to other And Me Accounts on the site. After a week of close monitoring, we’re back with some exciting new scoring updates.

During our last update, we tweaked the level of points that users received for an upvoted comment. Today, we’re rolling out the ability for high ranking users to downvote a comment and have that vote actually affect the permanent user score. Just how many points depends on how high ranking the user is, but we’ve now got a few tiers in place where saying something stupid or rude might actually cost you your account points.

The ultimate goal here is to raise the overall discussion quality on the site and to hopefully highlight some of the most influential users. To that end, we now mark all anonymous comments as guest. We’ve also disabled Gravatars for guests, so if you’d like a proper user picture, you’ll need to sign up for an And Me Account. Registering is free and takes about ten seconds (really).

For those of you with an account already (or who have freshly signed up), you’ll notice our login area has moved to the top right of the site. There you’ll find your user picture and percentile rank, along with links to edit your profile or logout. If you’re not logged in, you’ll see a Log In button (of course).

If you’re an especially keen user, you’ll notice that the Edit Profile page is all new. We’ve restyled everything and added a few fancy new options, like the ability to link a Twitter account. Soon, having a Twitter account linked will unlock some awesome new features around the site (plus we’ll absolutely NEVER tweet without your permission). For now though, linking your Twitter account will just display a handy link on your And Me profile page.

Along with improvements for the And Me Accounts, we’re also happy to be starting with a new advertising partner today. More details will soon follow.

If you haven’t caught our drift here yet, we’ve got a lot of exciting things in store for this site. We’ve got a handful of new scoring and community features still to be unleashed, and we can’t wait to share them with you guys.

A few months back, we launched our long-awaited (to us, anyway) scoring system here on Android and Me. In that time, you guys have racked up thousands of points leaving comments and getting upvoted. Today we’re ready to unleash another bit of the puzzle: a percentile rank for all And Me Accounts.