These beauties are rolling out of the factory floor and getting ready for you to drive away. Time to polish off your application, get your votes & testimonials, and then just start dreaming.

I know a place that we can go to A place where no one knows you They won't know who we are I know a place that we can run to And do those things we want to They won't know who we are

Let me take you there I wanna take you there

To enjoy the lyrics of the complete song ( courtesy Plain White T's ) playing with this slide show, go to http://tinyurl.com/letmetakeyouthere Enjoy!

Team GDC support line got quite a few queries today about ‘missing’ vote confirmation emails. It seems that many users, trying to vote for their favorite couples, are unable to verify their votes, because they are not receiving the confirmation emails.

We are deeply concerned about this and trying our best to resolve the issues. I wanted to understand exactly what was happening on the system and here is what I found out.

(A) In the last 48 hours, TGDC system has logged 16,430 attempts to vote. A whopping 60% of these votes have already been confirmed and registered for the applicants. If you belong to this group, you are happy and you can skip the rest of this post.

(B) Out of the balance 6500+ voting emails which remain unconfirmed, almost 25% of mails have bounced and returned to our server. A mail would bounce if user (voter) has accidentally (or intentionally) provided wrong email ID. Another reason a mail would bounce is if it got rejected from a corporate mail-spam filter.  For all mails that bounce, our system will make a 2nd attempt and then give up. There is no way of knowing but if your (voter) friend is complaining that he/she has not received the email, may I suggest they use an alternate email ID (the non-corporate friendly types like yahoo, gmail etc), and try again.

(C) Last, but not the least, it seems almost 75% of these 6500 emails is yet to be responded to. It is likely that your (voter) friend has plain overlooked the email, or it is possible that the confirmation email landed in their spam folder. If this is the case, persuade them to look through their mail box once more, and give you a break for your persistence.

Now here is the good news – all attempts at voting are logged on our system registering the email IDs provided with IP etc. If you feel you have some exceptional issues, and not getting any of your votes validated, do provide your URL and get in touch with Support GDC. They will certainly resolve the issue.

However my suggestion is not to get stressed out with a few missing votes. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, votes matter – but they are not the ONLY criteria. Relax - focus on your application, and start dreaming. A brave heart mentioned, in a comment to my earlier post, that they are not gunning for a single vote, but still want to make it to the TOP 100. C’est la Vie.

An email from a passionate applicant, over the weekend, drew my attention to the issue of ‘votes’. I quote verbatim:

“Though the contest is very well thought of, I would like to ask you if this contest could be in any way more favourable to people who are related to IT companies or call centres, where they can have a regular generation of mails from their friends working in similar or same companies?

Can an average Indian like me who has a small business of his own and a good social circle be at par with such people? Clearly the votes being generated by non-relatives and non-friends profile visitors is very minimal and hence the count solely depends upon how many people one can convince to vote for them. I think you may agree, though the concept is excellent, people who are close to IT industry will definitely stand at a much higher advantage than others. This may also explain the fact that many contestants with high number of votes are from Bangalore.
Another factor is probably people who have not much work to do and are on a fake id creating spree and voting under fictitious identities”

Team GDC clarifies that the COUNT of votes is not an absolute determinant, to make it to the shortlist of TOP 100 applications. It is certainly one of the factors, but not the ONLY one.
We want to make the “good votes” count because you all have taken a lot of effort to reach out to your friends, families and colleagues – and there is no intent to penalize all because of a few bad apples. While there is no available technology to make an absolute determination of votes created under fake identities, there are tell-tale signs that can be easily picked up, inferred, and corrected via human intervention. Our team is already reaching out to many such applicants and ensuring that the contest remains as fair as possible.

A friend of mine, visiting over the weekend, checked out the great driving challenge on my laptop. He is a passionate traveler and has clocked several hundred thousand miles in his Fiat and Maruti Esteem. Being a neo-luddite, he does not care about a blog, social network or photo-stream to share his experiences; just has amazing stories to share over endless cups of coffee. My dear readers, does my friend really stand a chance? I am sure there are many more people like my friend, this challenge will fail to touch, and that is the reality.

So, if more votes come from Bangalore or if breath-taking photo streams emanate from a Nikon D3, and inspiring stories are penned by a gifted writer – so be it . Let us all enjoy the shared experiences, and let the Jury do their job. Your comments are welcome!

It has been an overwhelming experience for Team GDC - reviewing over 5000 sign-ups and over 700 applications in just ten days since launch. The ‘Great Driving Challenge’ is certainly off to a great start!

Browsing the applications featured online, I have read some amazing stories and clicked through many gorgeous photo streams. I hope to share many of these stories over the next few days, along with some tips and tricks for all you who aspire to make it to the TOP 100 shortlist. For those of you who are yet to apply, I hope these applications serve to inspire. There can never be a better opportunity to do what you have always wanted - break free from your cubicle and hit the road!

There is a little wanderlust in all of us, and we all aspire to go to those picture perfect destinations some day. Here is a link to the Top 10 most spectacular drives in the world (http://tinyurl.com/topdrives). I was trifle disappointed that Pacific Coast Highway Route#1 was not on this list, but Cochin-Kovalam made it! There is a similar list I discovered for the Top 10 scenic drives in India (http://tinyurl.com/indiadrives), but I am not sure about this one. I would love to hear back from you, whether you agree with these lists. If you have a better suggestion and a photo-stream to back it up, do share your link with us.

Now back to GDC. As you can well imagine, our support team is flooded with questions, concerns and many positive suggestions. We are listening; responding to every email personally, and working round the clock to deliver a great experience for you online. I look forward to your continued support. Stay tuned for more updates.

Sandip.