Thanks becuzimborwn
I can tell you an inexact time that I won, so I hope that much will help. It was at 3:15 EST, but it was not at 3:15:00. Maybe 10, 20 seconds after 3:15. Judging by the rules, there are a couple of things that I have deduced which hopefully will answer some questions people are having.
Every 8 minutes is a new timeframe in which a prize will be offered. According to the official rules, the time at which the prize is offered is determined randomly. This (theoretically) means that every instant in time within each 8 minute window is equally likely to offer up the prize. If you consider time to be, in practicality, continuous, this means that the distribution is uniform and the expected winning time is at 4 minutes, 0.5 seconds into each window. Conventional logic tells you that it's not terribly likely for the prize to be offered at the start or end of each timeframe. So at least from a statistical standpoint, it works in your favor to routinely play the game during the middle few minutes of a given timeframe. It's very simple to figure out when each timeframe starts because there are exactly 180 in each day.
So, pick a time slot, keep at it, and hopefully it will pay off. Good luck, hope this helps.