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Peppermint Nation,

Hello to all from Peppermint Headquarters in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina. As many of you know we are getting geared up to release the next iteration of our operating system, Peppermint Three. We are in the final stages of development and now is the time where we need to seek talented artists to apply the finishing touches – We need a Default Desktop Wallpaper that is creative and eye-catching !!

We had some extremely talented art last year and we expect this year to be even more fierce of a competition. Pull out all the stops and let’s see what you’ve got. If you didn’t know it, last year one of the runners-up and nearly won the whole pie was a Photograph that was slightly modified and filtered.  It was a tough call… Always is

Alright. Today is the day to get started and here are the rules and technical yadda-yadda to get started. Let the games begin and good luck

Peppermint Three Desktop Wallpaper Challenge

The Prize: $200.00 [USD] plus a Peppermint Stick [USB Dongle] and a handful of Peppermint Stickers

The Clues:

• Important!! We are looking for an un-branded piece of art to use as the Default Wallpaper for Peppermint Three. Meaning – the use of the word ‘Peppermint’ and the ‘Candy’ icon are not necessary
• Peppermint Three’s default theme will be GTK Orta which is displayed here
• Peppermint Three’s default icon Set will be Faenza which is displayed here

The Rules:

• The obvious: No nudity or anything offensive to any religion, race or creed
• The artwork Must Be Original Artwork Only. If you use photos or pictures that are not your own please include a link to the source material so we can verify you have permission to use the source. Anything that is copyright infringed will be tossed in the trashcan
• Parameters:  dimension- 2560 x 1600 ppi , file type – .jpg or .png
• You may submit as many entries as you like
• Deadline is Sunday May 6th, 2012 at 12pm Noon [EDT - GMT -4:00]
• Send all entries via email with your Name and contact information to pr@peppermintos.com
• One winner will be chosen the week of May 6th, 2012
• The rules are subject to change at any time without notice, but we highly doubt it 

We are super excited and can’t wait to see all of your entries !!

Kindest regards

Kendall, Shane and Team Peppermint

Good morning Peppermint Nation

The Peppermint Servers will be down for a scheduled maintenance from Tuesday February 28th – 3AM EST until Tuesday February 28th – 6AM EST. This three hour down time will allow our awesome official sponsor VPS.NET to do some planned maintenance as well as expand their SAN facility and cloud services where all things Peppermint are powered and delivered. This will effect the main site, all download servers and the Peppermint Community Forums and all will be unavailable during this short time period.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words about VPS.NET and express how grateful we are for their sponsorship of Peppermint. During the first week when Peppermint One was released the download traffic was so extreme that we were about to crash our server but  VPS.NET came to our aid. They adopted us on the spot and had us migrated over to their Cloud with nearly any interruption and we’ve been there ever since.

Team Peppermint can’t say enough about the staff at VPS.NET & how friendly and efficient they are when you need assistance. They are clearly the most top-notch Web/Cloud host that we have ever been associated. Our little slice of their Cloud is rock solid and never gives up – we are super impressed. If you’ve never checked into VPS’s services you definitely should. They offer Cloud Servers, Cloud hosting, CDN and right now [for a limited time]  CloudLinux is Free for 6 months when you Sign Up with VPS.NET

When its all said and done, VPS.NET is directly responsible for ensuring that Peppermint is delivered world wide to over 140 countries and territories and has served close to 10 million downloads without pause….  We couldn’t do this scale of project without their assistance and that’s the truth.

Have a great week and more news on Peppermint Three as we approach its release in the Spring / Early Summer

Kendall, Shane and Team Peppermint

Peppermint Nation,

I want to take the time to thank each and every one of you for being patient with us all here at Peppermint HQ in North Carolina. It’s been a long time coming that we can offer Peppermint on our own custom USB sticks!! Starting off with custom printed CD’s was not extremely hard to accomplish. However, USB media can be expensive, when you want something custom and high quality, and you have to purchase a large batch of them up front.

Peppermint takes in monies every month that we stick away in order to fund programs like getting the USB’s on track. But, this has been slow going due to the cost. But, just when you think that we may have to put it aside for another year in steps a community member to take things over the top and jump start things.

Ian Wigglesworth from Lincolnshire UK was that person for us here at Peppermint. He saw the need for a USB program and made contact with via email about three months ago. Not only did Ian see the need, he made a very generous financial contribution to this cause and worked with a company to produce the USB sticks to our specifications. We really can’t thank Ian enough for his involvement with this program and we are super excited to be able to offer Peppermint Sticks from today forward.

About Ian Wigglesworth:

Peppermint Nation,

The main Peppermint OS site will be joining the fight against SOPA/PIPA by participating in the blackout January 18th-January 23rd. If you are not aware of this dangerous bill that is attempting to pass US Congress then please watch the following short film and educate yourself as to why this fight is so important >> Why SOPA and PIPA will break the Internet

One of the most effective ways to be heard it go DIRECTLY to Congress, for your district, and tell them what you think. Peppermint has done so over the Internet, email, Twitter, Facebook and any avenue that we can to let our representatives in North Carolina that we are not pleased with their support of SOPA / PIPA and will not be in support of their campaigns from here forward unless they retract their support of these harmful Bills.

We urge you to take action yourself.  This is a great site to see everyone in Congress and where they stand: SOPA Opera

Also, we are using a Free and nifty Stop SOPA Wordpress Plug-in to automate the Blackout for us here at Peppermint. Check it out here >> Down With SOPA Plug-In

No Censorship. Freedom, Peace and Good Will to all

Team Peppermint

In a move to properly align with companies who do not support SOPA, Protect-IP and other business practices, team Peppermint has made a collective decision to remove all of our domains away from GoDaddy and on to Hover.com

You can do more to effect change and join the forces to block SOPA and Protect-IP from being signed.  In the USA you can visit Sopa Opera and see who in the US government in your state are supporting these two initiatives and let them know that you oppose these moves.

Some may say that moving our domains from GoDaddy is too little too late or that this move is in vain. However, we are here to tell you that every Dollar counts and that no matter what the cause, voting with your wallet is a very powerful way of effecting change.  Here at Peppermint HQ we refuse to be led around blindly and will consciously spend our funds and energy with companies and services that put the interest of the people and the Earth first.  We urge you to do the same, examine where your money is spent, who you are spending it with and evaluate how to change those habits.

If anyone in our community sees more ways that we can be more effective in this cause, or any cause,  please let us know.

Cheers to all,

Kendall, Shane and Team Peppermint