In ten days the web will experience Balloonacy, a virtual race across the internet in cute animal balloons. The competition will stretch across sites that add some Balloonacy code, which will automagically become a course for the participants to madly click through (while searching for power-ups and other goodies) when the race begins on June 23rd. The winner gets a trip to Ibiza with friends!

The site and idea for the race are quite nifty, especially for a marketing gimmick meant to promote animal-themed cell phone packages from UK-based Orange. Unfortunately this means that only UK residents over 18 can take part. To be expected, I guess, but a more distributed, web-inspired race like this could really be something.

For now, we'll just admire the illegal US-based balloon above that we registered (yes, it's a durlphin - did you even have to ask?) and keep trying to figure out how to wrangle some code and become part of the course (look out for a balloon like the one at left in the bottom corner). But mostly, we'll be hoping that somebody un-viral-marketings this idea soon.