In Microsoft’s continued effort to pay people to use their products, they are “burying” $10,000 somewhere on the web and will be giving clues out, but IE 8 (or Firefox + the user-agent switcher plugin) are the only browsers capable of finding the clues. In fact, if you go to the page with a different browser, it will make fun of you:
Chrome: “But you’ll never find it using tarnished Chrome.”
IE 7: “But you’ll never find it using Windows Internet Explorer 7″
Most other browsers: “But you’ll never find it using that browser.”
Interestingly, I don’t have IE 7 or Chrome installed. All I have is Firefox plus a handy user-agent switcher. The user agent string tells the server what browser you are using. With the plugin, though, you can send anything you want. For example, here is the user-agent string for Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0)
So go install the user-agent switcher and add that string under Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options.
The contest is open to Australians and the rules appear to require that you actually use IE 8, but I’m no lawyer, so don’t ask me.