What on earth is going on here! A year already? Wow! Didn’t expect to make it this far, and now that we’re here, I still can’t believe it.

I’d like to thank Ashwin, Aditya, and Aayush, all three of whom helped us set up this little production of ours. And I’ll throw a second thanks at Aayush, for being the strong pillar that he was during the initial stages of getting this whole show up and running. Without his editorial guidance I’m pretty sure we would have ended up posting Bollywood information. Which wouldn’t have been half that bad coming to think of it.

Of course, there’s the ‘current generation’ Apple smokers I’d like to thank: Avner, for helping us out with the PR and ads. Phil, our oldest (and tallest) non co-founder writer. Brandon Pittman, the aggressive and passionate reviewer than he is. Without editing we’d probably be sued by now. Chris, now Assistant Editor, for helping me sort through the junk that the rest of the writers send in. Corey, ex-firefighter now-presenter with straight-from-the-heart writeups. Ankur Gupta, B-Tech student from New Delhi, now heading our iPhone apps department. And Jonas Wisser, brand new on the team is just about finding his footing (with a giant 2000 word article to start with, I might add). I myself didn’t realise we had so many on the team!

A huge thank you to our sponsors which is one of the main reasons we have been able to stick around for so long. It’s a fun but hard job, and to get a few bucks to spend at the end of the day makes it all worth it.

Year 1 was the beginning. But we’re not slowing down. In fact, I think we’re more than prepared for Year 2. We won’t disappoint.

Yours,

Milind Alvares, in first person. And Preshit Deorukhkar backing my words.
Co-founding members of the Smoking Apples team.

Giving away an iPod Shuffle!

We’re not the richest guys on the planet, but we’d like to say thank you by giving away a brand new 4th Generation iPod Shuffle to one lucky winner. This is not sponsored by anyone, so we have only you to thank. And if you don’t make the cut, there’s two $10 iTunes gift cards you can use to buy anything you’d like at the iTunes Store. Let me just state the rules first:

1. Instead of the usual ‘comment or retweet’ style of giveaways, we’ve got something challenging for you to do. Write, draw, carve, arrange “SA” or the SA logo on anything (surprise us!), grab a picture of it, and slip it into the comments. Use your imagination, creativity, or wit to come up with something ‘awesome’. Yes, ‘awesomeness’ is going to be scale on which the winner will be judged. You can upload the image on any host, and add the link to the image in the comments.
a. Real pictures instead of Photoshop jobs. Unless you’re doing something really special.
b. You can use the tags if you want to embed the image in the comment itself.
c. Submissions can be sent in till 22nd August.
d. If you’re unsure about uploading the image, you can forward the email to our PR email address to the right.

2. The $10 iTunes gift cards will be given to a retweet and a comment as runners up prizes.

3. The Shuffle is only open for residents of US, Canada, Europe, and India, since those are the places we can get it shipped. Yes, it will arrive at your doorstep. The iTunes gift cards are valid for US iTunes accounts only.

4. No this is not a scam. We’re better than that. (Standard giveaway rules apply)

Most of all, we just want to know what you have to say!