Stride gum will give out free gum coupons if you sign a petition to fight poorly done movies based on video games. Specifically, movies by director Uwe Boll, who credits include clunkers such as Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead.

(I thought this was a joke but it’s true, confirms Kathy Beyer, manager of corporate communication for Stride’s parent Cadbury Adams.)

Apparently, Boll told FearNet, a horror movie site, that if 1 million people sign the petition, he’ll stop making such video-game adaptions. Back then, the April 4 interview mentioned that 18,000 people had signed the petition. Now, the Stop Uwe Boll site has gathered 239,686 signatures.

Stride gum, ‘the ridiculously long lasting gum,’ is doing this because, says Gary Osifchin, Stride North American marketing director, gamers are its people.

“Since gamers are one of our most supportive groups, we’ve been looking for ways to return the favor. And what better way is there to get gamers’ backs than by helping them rescue their cherished video games from the clutches of Uwe Boll?” Osifchin said.

The free-gum catch: Stride won’t pay up unless the petition reaches 1 million signatures by next Wednesday, May 14, 5 p.m. eastern time. If the goal is reached, each signer will receive a digital coupon for a pack of gum.

One of the Web’s favorite free distractions, Line Rider, has inspired a new company.

Newport Beach’s inXile Entertainment spun off a new company called SparkWorkz.

Line Rider, which started in 2006 as an art-school project, is a web-based game where users draw lines and then watch a bob sledder ride the lines. It has since been played by thousands who then uploaded their creations to YouTube. The most popular Line Rider video has been viewed 7.4 million times.

InXile bought the rights to the game in late 2006 from creator Bostjan Cadez, who spent time in Newport Beach to meet the developers. Read the original Register story: If you draw it, Line Rider will come. Line Rider is now heading to the Nintendo Wii and DS this summer. The first preview of the game for the Wii and DS is expected to be posted at game site IGN.com Thursday night.

Online, anyone can play for free. The official site features a ‘Bostjan’ with a new look but the game is pretty much the same.

“Vanity is a big thing on the Internet. It’s either you show off, ‘Hey, look at me,’ on Facebook and MySpace. Or it’s look what I can do. That show-off aspect is what I like,” said Brian Fargo, inXile’s founder.

Above: See the inspiration of Line Rider from art student Bostjan Cadez’ drawing pad.

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In honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I pretty much only read the cartoons in the New Yorker. The stories are good but soooo long and who has time? Sometimes, I don’t even have enough time to read the cartoons!

An easy way to get my New Yorker cartoon fix is to tune in to its Cartoon Channel online (free registration required). You pick the topic (animals, law, medical, business, etc..) and in a small window, a new cartoon refreshes every 30 seconds. I called this post ‘A laugh a minute’ because I’d say that only about half the cartoons are outright funny.

A tip from my mother-in-law who loves the funny pages: For those who want to waste more time, check out the animated New Yorker cartoons. These are short 15-second animations of existing New Yorker cartoons, including the memorable ‘Tastes like Chicken’ with diners staring at legless frog rolling out of the restaurant in a wheelchair. A sign in the background says “Try our frogs’ legs.” RingTales, which offers the animated cartoons, recently launched the same service for Dilbert.

A weekly round up of deals, contest and free stuff. More at the Free+Win+Deals archive.

What? Mother’s Day is Sunday? Ahh… that’s why Gateway is tossing in a free pink Canon PowerShot SD1100 camera with every purchase of one of its M-Series laptops, which start at $899.99. So you keep the laptop (in Arctic Bloom on right) and give mom the camera. The camera itself is $250 and includes a 2-GB memory card. If pink just isn’t your color, Gateway will instead take $200 off the price. Is this a good deal? A quick Google search pulls up a FatWallet discussion from two weeks ago when the M-Series S laptop went on sale for 24 hours for $599. It sold out within 3 hours. The free-camera sale ends today (May 7).

Free web domains: MyDomain, a Vancouver, Wash.-company, plans to giveaway a few dozen dot-coms, nets, orgs and biz domains next Tuesday, May 13. Its “Marathon Giveaway” promotion will give domains to 25 people who click the site’s banner ad that day between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific Time. If you miss out, the site is still offering a two-for-one deal. Without any discounts, domains are $8.95 (includes 20-cent ICANN fee).

Need $1,000? Just find a movie or TV-themed web site not already listed in OVGuide.com, the online video guide with a database of 1,684 sites from AnimeWoot to Zombie Cinema. Its ‘Suggest a Site‘ contest could be a ploy to get users to track down new web sites devoted to movies, TV shows or other video themes. But if you find one not in its database, you could be the monthly winner of $1,000. More DETAILS.

Suite Life Sweepstakes: Adobe is giving away 100 copies of its Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, valued at $2,499 each. While the contest is meant for people who buy any Adobe Creative Suite 3 Premium Edition, there’s no purchase necessary. More DETAILS.

HAZE + Korn: It’s another video-game mashup contest. Mix scenes from HAZE, a first-person shooter, with live concert footage from the metal band Korn. Winner gets a Sony 46″ HDTV, PlayStation 3, a customized HAZE guitar signed by Korn and $500 … Submit your mashup by May 19, 2008. GameTrailers.com offers all the footage to make the music video. More DETAILS.
**Korn freebie** If you own Korn’s latest CD, Untitled, the ‘Haze’ song is available for free. Just insert the disc into your computer and visit korn.com/bonus for instructions.

Here’s another excerpt in the ongoing series about online deals. Previous chapters: How FatWallet tracks down deals, Deal Locker guarantees coupon codes and Getting the best deal from Buy.com.

You may not be able to make a living by joining Buy.com’s affiliate program.

But imagine if you joined hundreds of other affiliate programs. And you had a web site that sent hundreds, no, hundreds of thousands of shoppers to Buy.com, Amazon and other online stores. If consumers buy a lot of stuff, you’ll make a decent living.

Affiliate programs, in Internet time, have been around forever dating back to the mid-1990s when I had to define the word ‘Internet’ in my stories. Back then, ordinary people could make a living off affiliate programs. And with a minimal number of consumers shopping online, online stores needed the extra promotion.

Shawn Collins — who founded the industry’s semi-annual event, the Affiliate Summit — set up his first affiliate program through Amazon in 1997. What a difference from today, he said.

“Everything was prehistoric. You couldn’t log in to see your sales. It was done by e-mail. There wasn’t all the linking options,” he remembers. “Back then, it was pretty common for people to be satisfied to make enough money to cover their Internet bill, making $20 to $40 a month. Today’s there’s a whole breed of super affiliates who are making 6-figures or more.”

Marketing Sherpa, a research consultant, reported last year that in a survey of 329 merchants and 296 affiliates, those affiliates with 3+ years of experience made on average $54,975 a year. For those with less than 2-years in the business, they made $34,612.

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Stan Lee discusses Spider-Man 2 at UC Irvine on Thursday night. At $10 for the discussion and movie, I’d call that a cheap date even for comic-book lovers. It’s even cheaper if you’re a student or senior. (Comic-book image of Stan on right from his site.)

What: Discussion with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, and “Spider-Man 2″screening
When: Thursday, May 8
Discussion: 6 p.m. at UCI’s Social Science Hall, Room 100 (Bldg. 200 on campus map)
Screening: 7 p.m. at the Humanities Instructional Building, Room 100 (Bldg. 610 on
campus map)
Tickets for both the discussion and screening are $10, or $7 for non-UCI students, $6 for seniors and $5 for UCI students. More ticket details HERE. There is no assigned seating, and entrance lines begin at 5 p.m.
Parking: $7 at the Student Center Parking Structure (SCPS) at the corner of West Peltason and Pereira drives.
More information: www.filmandvideocenter.com, or e-mail: fvc@uci.edu

Sponsored by the UC Irvine Department of Film and Media Studies and the UCI Film and Video Center.

On a recent visit to OC’s own Buy.com, I noticed that the Aliso Viejo online store still has dot-com flair.

Free ice cream, sodas and Naked Juice. Catered lunches every day! I’m told that scooters, Razors and even Segways are regularly used by employees to move from one cubicle to another — although not on the day I got a tour.

Little pots of fresh grass decorate the conference room tables and the lobby. Someone comes in weekly to trim grass with scissors. While the game room got cleared out for more customer service staff, a Ms. Pac-man arcade game found a new home in the cafeteria.

Neel Grover, its chief executive since May 2006, is young, friendly and determined. Dressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, he’s far from the suited exec at most companies in the county. That’s him on the right, although that’s not his motorcycle. Buy.com’s founder Scott Blum is a collector.

The company plans to report its sixth consecutive profitable quarter soon. Not bad when you’re selling everything at a discount (except for prices set by the manufacturer).

“It’s not just me, by any means,” Grover tells me. “I have a great team. Most of the employees have been here for 10 years.”

That means the bulk of its 125 employees were there during the dot-com mania days, when it was a publicly traded company, employed more than 300 people and had free-shipping deals so frequently, I’d time purchases to take advantage of the deal. But also back then, the company was losing money and many critics thought Buy.com was going bye bye.

 Buy.com. Click here to check them out!