Following up on our "Speed Dials Hot Pick" contest earlier this year we are looking for some new backgrounds. If you're a talented designer or photographer we want to put your art on display.

The image resolution has to be at least 1600 x 1200 pixels (or higher). We don't care how or where you upload it, but bonus points to those who create a photo album on My Opera or writes a blog post and attach the background files directly.

We expect high quality on the Speed Dial backgrounds. Have a look on our current ones to get a feeling of what we're looking for. Aim for the skies and you might hit us (ouch, cheesy line...).

Our top-notch designers will evaluate and pick freely their favorite entries. We'll announce the picks earliest Rocktober 1st. We reserve the right to extend the contest if necessary. You must own the rights to the image and you agree that we can publish it on My Opera as a free download later. We'll credit you with a link to your page with your name on the Speed Dial backgrounds page.

You can submit your contribution as a comment below or send me a private message when you're done.

Good luck and we hope to see some awesome stuff.

Travel blogs are always cool, but when it's mixed together with a personal touch and a smile you can't help love it. Her most recent trip to Jamaica is an excellent example of this, just make sure you don't miss out the awesome pictures!

Since she loves to share her globe-trotting experiences we are invited on a journey from Love Park, Philadelphia, USA to Angola, Africa.

We are all eager to see her updates from her upcoming trip to Hanoi! Our best wishes to this week's member of the week L.D!

From Ireland we have a member who has done an amazing job spreading the word about Opera 10 in addition to being one of My Opera's most active commentator's. Sweetness!

Some of you might recognize him from the Speed Dial contest. His contribution lead to a skin that was featured on Choose Opera. Let's hope we see more creative customization tricks coming!

Put your hands together for this week's Member of the Week, WOFall!

Thanks to Tamil who does an amazing job gathering and publishing monthly statistics, we wanted to take a deeper look at how the My Opera community is growing.

As you can see from the graph above, My Opera has been experiencing a solid growth since August last year. Let's have a closer look at the numbers.

Age distribution

In addition, we want to supply you with more information about the community service in general, and one interesting demographic to look at is age distribution:

• 2%: < 13
• 9%: 13 - 17
• 41%: 18 - 24
• 30%: 25 - 34
• 10%: 35 - 44
• 8%: 45+

Top 10 visitor countries

• United States of America
• Viet Nam
• Germany
• Australia
• Norway
• South Korea
• United Kingdom
• Hong Kong
• Russian Federation
• Poland

Male:Female ratio

If anyone is wondering about the male:female ratio, we won't bother telling you. Oh, what the heck, it's 3.3:1. This is probably the most inaccurate piece of information we have due to... lack of information. If you provided us with more information our numbers would be more accurate, but we understand and respect everyone's privacy.

As you can tell from the statistics above, My Opera has visitors from all over the world and this is what makes this community a fun and vibrant place.

That's right boys and gals, we've come to the much anticipated round 2 (fight!) of our Online Writer Internship Contest. In case you've missed it, we are looking to offer a talented writer a fully paid, six-month internship as an Online Writer in our international headquarters in Oslo, Norway. The job will be to prepare articles and content about Opera, new Web technologies and keep our Web properties fresh.

The talented few who have advanced to round 2 has to answer the following question:

Write a "top 10" list that will entertain the My Opera community.

Without further ado, here are the finalists who has advanced to round 2. These are both community favorites and Opera employee picks. We are looking forward to read their submissions.

Good news, everyone! Opera 10 is finally here and we're looking for the top Opera 10 promoter in the Opera community.

The contest is easy. Use the affiliate program to spread the word about Opera 10. We've created a special Opera 10 section where we'll keep track of progress for one month (ends October 1st). We'll reward the top promoter with a sweet prize: A brand new Nintendo Wii with 2 games of your choice, huzzah!

Anything is allowed (besides cheating!) and you have to be a My Opera member to participate. Simply grab your affiliate code and have fun with it.

Good luck and may the best win!

Mmm... Opera Goodies!

There are also three other categories you can participate in. Unfortunately we can't give away a Nintendo Wii here, but we do have some new red Opera hoodies for the best contributions.

Show us your blog: There are many bloggers on My Opera and we'd like to see what you think about Opera.

Show us your design: This can be anything "pixelated". Have you made a Web site for the purpose of spreading the word about Opera or a stylish button or banner? Then we want to hear from you.

Most creative ad: Done something crazy or anything viral? Then this category is for you. We want to see blog posts, pictures and even videos about your creative ad.