As promised, the final round of voting for the 2007 Crunchies is now live. The 100 nominees were made public not long after I wrote this post last Friday, and everyone is allowed to cast votes once a day in each of the 20 categories until the voting wraps up on January 10. The award ceremony will still be held on January 18 in San Francisco, where the winners will be announced LIVE! (Doesn’t everyone love what that word implies nowadays?)

I considered listing each of the nominees in this post, but if you plan on casting a vote or two (or 20) in the next few days, I assume that you will probably take the time to peruse all of the finalists for yourself. Here are a few highlights:

Nominees for the best new gadget/device of 2007 include the iPhone, the Kindle, the ooma, the Pleo, and Nintendo’s Wii. I hadn’t heard of a Pleo before, although I unknowingly saw one at the mall when I was Christmas shopping last week; it’s a robotic baby dinosaur that displays lifelike emotional and developmental behaviors. I should have known something was up when I saw a toy dinosaur displayed in a protective plastic case at the front of the Sharper Image store (a Pleo retails for around $350). On another note, I’m pretty sure that the first Wii models were released in late 2006—but who knows how binding the rules of the 2007 contest are, especially with this being the inaugural year for the Crunchies.

The nominees for the best new start-up are: Hulu, iMedix, Joost, Ribbit, and Tumblr; while the candidates for the best overall site or product of 2007 are: Digg, Facebook, GrandCentral, Twitter, and Zillow. These are probably the two biggest categories of the contest, although I am intrigued by the best bootstrapped start-up award (for companies that have raised less than $100,000).

There are a handful of sites and companies that were named as repeat finalists in different categories (I know for a fact that this is allowed), as well as some unorthodox awards that I find interesting. Take for example: the website most likely to make the world a better place, or a procrastinator’s favorite: the best time sink site.

I’ll keep my predictions to myself, mainly because they are unsubstantiated and have a good chance of being wrong. Plus, I like to play favorites, and I need to get busy voting. As I mentioned earlier, voting went live five days ago, and since that time, over 20,000 votes have already been cast. So I think I have a good chance of cracking this thing wide open with my one vote a day. Bottom line: robotic baby dinosaurs matter. iPhones? Not so much.

I wrote this post about the Crunchies earlier in the month when the nomination forum for the award contest initially went up. Competing blogs GigaOm, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch are co-hosting the event with the hope of honoring this year’s most innovative start-ups, as well as other technological advances made in 2007.

The nomination process wrapped up on Dec. 13, and the Crunchies blog has been promising to post the 100 finalists (for all 20 categories) for several days now. People are beginning to get antsy, especially because the finalists need to go up before another round of live voting can begin, which will eventually determine the winner of each award. The deadline for announcing these finalists has been pushed back twice already, and the blog currently promises that the names will be up by Dec. 21.

That’s today, and it’s 3:43 p.m. eastern time right now. And I don’t see any names. The comment boards have been buzzing, to say the least. I’m interested to see who was nominated, but I’m also not overly agitated that the Crunchies committee has missed a few deadlines. I just wonder if they’ll have enough time to conduct a fair vote, especially with the ceremony scheduled for January 18, and the holidays knocking out a week’s worth of voting on top of the delays.

The names should be posted eventually, and I will try to provide you all with a recap of the finalists when that happens, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my eggnog drinking, gingerbread house making, present opening, and Christmas tree smelling. So yeah, you might have to wait until next week to hear back from me on this.

Given that almost everyone I know is engulfed in holiday fever/spirit/terror/bliss (take your pick), I figure only the true tech aficionados are browsing the web for news stories right now. I want to reward this genuine devotion, which is why I’ve chosen today to blog about a truly great news item: Swedish citizens use the internet. A lot! No need to thank me, I’m in a generous mood.

But in all seriousness, this survey conducted by Statistics Sweden is interesting, especially if you are the type of person (like me) who tends to think about internet usage domestically and not always with a global mindset. Before you click on the link above, I have to warn you that most of the report is in Swedish. And based on the fact that my multilingual abilities peaked around the time I recognized Bono counting out of order in that iPod commercial, I’ll assume that you all need directing to the English translation of the survey as well. It begins on page 239 of the report (although it actually reads page 241 in the Adobe Reader tool bar). Either way, scroll towards the end of the linked document and you’ll see what I am talking about.

It appears that internet usage actually declined in Sweden between 2006 and 2007 (from 84 percent of the population to 80 percent). This statistic is surprising, mainly because the internet has only become more pervasive in the majority of places as time has gone on. (Insert doubts about the accuracy of this survey here.)

Nordic countries tend to dominate technologically in the EU. Iceland boasts an internet usage rate of over 80 percent, with citizens using the service at least once a week. Norway maintains its usage at an even 80 percent, while 75 percent of the citizens in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden report that they use the internet for various purposes. When you think of countries that are at the forefront of technology use, I am not sure that the Nordic region is the first area that comes to mind, so these figures are beneficial to know.

Despite Sweden’s recent dip in internet usage, citizens who already use the service have increased the frequency with which they access it. Almost all Swedish citizens own a mobile phone as well, while close to 90 percent have PCs in their homes. The internet is most popular among 16 to 44 year olds, with over 90 percent of this age group using the service. The subsection of the population aged 65 to 74 has the least usage (only 40 percent of this group use the internet).

The popularity of broadband usage has skyrocketed in Sweden over the past few years. In 2005, 44 percent of the country’s internet users opted for the faster connection method. In 2007, over 70 percent used broadband connections. The most common reasons that Swedish citizens used the internet were to: research information on goods and services, send and receive emails, complete banking transactions, make online purchases, obtain public information, and take advantage of peer-to-peer file sharing.

According to the survey, about one-third of the internet users in Sweden are involved with e-commerce. These people used the internet to make travel and hotel reservations and to purchase clothes, sporting goods, movies, music, books, and newspapers. Sweden places sixth among other European countries involved in the survey in terms of how many of their citizens order goods and services over the internet. Norway snagged the top spot in the survey, with 48 percent of their population choosing to shop online.

So what does this all mean? I’m not exactly sure, but I do find it interesting that countries such as Sweden, Iceland, and Norway are so technologically aware and active. I tend to assess the technological identity of a country by the strength of its tech community, even though that is such a small part of the population. Maybe it’s more about real people, in unrelated fields, coming together because of one common medium; maybe that equates to technological maturity.

And on that note, I think I’ve gone a little too deep for my own taste. I promise to veer away from less than insightful philosophies about the state of the internet in the future. That’s not why you come here anyways. It’s for my sarcastic wit and stellar jokes, isn’t it? Ahh yes, that’s what I thought.

Privacy (or the lack thereof) is a major concern with internet users in the present day. I try not to think about it that often, because when I do, it tends to creep me out. Honestly, the amount of knowledge that Google retains is scary. With 58.5 percent of the U.S. market completing their searches on Google-powered sites, and the company holding onto information about your search queries for 18 months, it’s like Google knows everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. And as history has already shown us, search engine companies aren’t always deserving of our trust. Like the mean girl at school, they nonchalantly share your secrets with everyone, all the while acting as though they’ve done nothing wrong.

Ask.com is aiming to differentiate itself from its competitors (namely Google, Yahoo, and MSN) by providing users with privacy, something that no other search engine company has tried (or wanted) to do. With a new feature called AskEraser, Ask.com users can opt to have cookies deleted from their web browser. This includes their IP addresses, their user ID and session ID cookies, and the text of their search queries through all Ask.com search areas. And you don’t have to be a computer mastermind to activate the function. Beginning this past Monday, Dec. 10, the AskEraser tool has been displayed in the right-hand corner of the Ask.com homepage. You simply click on “AskEraser,” after which a prompt appears explaining what the feature does. Then you press “Turn on AskEraser,” and the process is complete. All it takes is about five seconds, and your search queries will be safe from prying eyes, sort of.

The issue that some critics take with the AskEraser feature is that it’s misleading. The function only works for searches that are completed through Ask.com’s search box, and not for searches that are executed through an Ask.com toolbar on a third-party site. That third-party site can still retain data regarding your search activity. Ask.com also depends upon Google for many of the text-based ads that appear next to its search results, and the AskEraser function cannot delete the search request information that Google receives to help pair ads with specific users. Nevertheless, AskEraser users will have much more confidentiality than those who frequent other search engine sites.

There are doubts that the selling point of privacy will be strong enough to catapult Ask.com higher in the search engine rankings. The company currently holds the fourth-place spot in the U.S., with a 4.7 percent share of the nation’s market. Google, as mentioned above, is first, Yahoo is second with 22.9 percent, and MSN is a distant third at 9.7 percent. Even though AskEraser may not translate into market dominance for Ask.com (Google is way too menacing to go down without a fight), hopefully this marketing tactic will send a clear message to web-based corporations: contrary to popular belief, the current age of internet users doesn’t want everybody knowing their business.

Spam comes in all shapes and sizes, none of which are very well liked. I avoided original Spam like the plague as a child (it frightens me to this day), but electronic spam has created far more frustration and worry over the past few years than the mystery luncheon meat ever did. In a blog post taken from Read/WriteWeb today, Josh Catone writes:

“In 2001, spam accounted for an estimated 5% of our email. In 2007, it clogs our inboxes to the tune of 90-95% of all email sent…The year-over-year increase appears to indicate the failure of the US federal CAN-SPAM Act, which was passed in 2004 when spam only accounted for about 70% of all email sent.”

Catone is citing data from the spam filtering tech company Barracuda Networks. These figures are much more severe and telling than the tame statistics released by market researcher IDC recently, which were quoted in a USA Today article last month.

Unsolicited email messages creep (or pour, depending on your level of misfortune) into our inboxes on a daily basis, dodging filters in the form of MP3 files, e-cards, and PDF attachments. USA Today references Bill Gates’ bold statement in 2004 that in two years, the spam crisis would be resolved. Yet in 2007, a year after this problem was expected to be obsolete, electronic and human spammers are managing to send out 60 to 150 billion spam messages over the internet each day.

Even though IDC’s data is a little more reserved than Barracuda’s, it still conveys the behemoth nature of the spam problem. According to IDC, this is the first year that the total number of spam messages sent worldwide (10.8 trillion) will exceed the number of person-to-person emails sent out (10.5 trillion). The effect is that email accounts are first and foremost serving as a vehicle for spammers, which is an idea that no internet user or email account holder welcomes.

Email services often come with built-in defenses that block spam now, and security software is being enhanced to better protect against this growing problem. This forces spammers to be a little more creative in the way that they send messages. The growth of bots and compromised PCs that spew out spam in bulk has also fueled an increase in messages.

If you want some more background on the subject, the USA Today article includes a lot of information on the progression of spam over the past few years, as well as some interesting statistics on the different types of spam and the filtering technologies that are emerging to combat the messages. Also, here is an overview of Symantec’s seasonal spam report, which highlights some of the spam trends from this month and 2007 in its entirety.

I am well aware that Amazon unveiled its new e-book reader, the Kindle, over two weeks ago, and I have a legitimate reason as to why I’ve waited so long to write a post about it: I was waiting for other people to do the work for me.

Anyways, it turns out that I probably didn’t need to wait a whole two weeks before I wrote about the device, because people started talking and blogging about the Kindle before it even debuted on Nov. 19, and they haven’t stopped since. So I have plenty of opinions to link to, and from what I can tell, people either like the Kindle or they hate it. Notice that I didn’t say love in the previous sentence, because I have yet to come across a positive review of Amazon’s Kindle that doesn’t include at least a few minor criticisms. But I suppose that’s to be expected, seeing as this is Amazon’s first crack at creating a functional e-book reader.

So what exactly is the Kindle? Well, that’s a tough question to answer, but I’ll try my best to explain it to you (or at least link to others who can explain it better than I can). The basic purpose of the product is to allow users to download, store, and read e-books from anywhere at any time. Even though electronic books have been around for almost a decade and haven’t really caught on with the reading elite, the Kindle has the potential to revolutionize the book industry. (If only there weren’t so many things wrong with it.)

Although the Kindle is not the first device of its kind to debut on the Web 2.0 scene, it’s advertised as the best. The Kindle’s impressive technology is limited mostly to its screen, which is as crisp and as readable as paper print, thanks to E Ink. It also boasts a wireless content delivery system. Users can download material to their Kindle (like books and magazines) and browse through online newspapers and blogs as long as they are in an area with Sprint network coverage. And they don’t have to be a Sprint customer to do this. The Kindle’s battery life is extremely resilient as well (a two hour charge provides 30 hours of power), and busy readers have the option of bulking up their memory with an SD card.

If you want to read more about all of the great features that the Kindle has to offer, I recommend Steven Levy’s lengthy Newsweek article, which I am quick to note sounds a tad bit biased, or at least forgiving of the mistakes that were made in the creation of this product. (Levy did get an advanced look at Amazon’s Kindle so that he could write the cover story in time for the device’s mid-November release.)

The Kindle’s lackluster design and price tag (it retails at $399 and books at Amazon.com cost $9.99 a piece) seem to be the two areas where consumers have the most complaints. I’ll admit, the Kindle does look like something straight off the set of Weird Science–a joke which you may not get if you weren’t a product of the 80s. Where is the touch screen? The color? The flair? Is this asking too much, or are we just a generation that’s been spoiled by the product design genius of Apple? Blogger Charlie Stross describes it like so: “The Kindle looks like something you’d shove under a door with a dodgy hinge to keep it from opening by mistake.”

Aside from these obvious deterrents, people who’ve actually tested out the device have more to say, or rather, more to complain about. Robert Scoble posted a 14 minute video on his blog last week with a laundry list of all the things he found wrong with the Kindle. Most of his points were well founded, and I am still wondering why the guys at Amazon didn’t push to allow Kindle users to buy books for other people who own the device. The Kindle did, after all, launch just in time for Christmas.

There is also a lot of groaning about how the Kindle threatens the future of reading. See here. With Amazon’s strict Terms of Service in place, Kindle users cannot lend their e-books out to anyone or share their literary finds with friends. It’s like the art of reading and the beauty of books is dead…or at least tainted…if the Kindle really does end up taking off. On the flip side of this argument are people who believe that a convenience tool for reading is necessary, especially in a digital age where children seem to have shorter attention spans and everyone expects instant gratification.

I honestly could write a lot more about this topic, but I’ll refrain for brevity’s sake. Ok, fine, this post obviously isn’t short, or concise, but I did start off thinking that it would be. So I should get partial credit for attempting to write a brief post with an extra helping of links. I just couldn’t help myself, there is so much circulating about the Kindle right now. Here are a few other links that I liked:

This is an overview of the 10 Lessons in Innovation that the Kindle has taught us–I really enjoyed this write up, mainly because it didn’t gloss over the mistakes that Amazon made, but instead dug a little deeper to try and figure out what the company was thinking when it released a product that clearly needs a few revisions.

This post discusses Amazon’s Kindle as “the iPod of reading,” and how this reference point “has become an all-purpose metaphor” that “saves saves publicists, journalists, bloggers and everybody else the necessity of having to think too hard about what something actually is.”

And finally, a few afterthoughts for people who already own the coveted and/or despised device. Michael Arrington writes about how stealing books for a Kindle is as easy as accessing pirated music, and David Berlind assesses the recovery of a Kindle after it crashes.

Wow, I’m beat. I demand a week long reprieve before I have to say or type the word Kindle again. Overall, I see the device as a rough draft of sorts for Amazon. The amount of consumer and product feedback that they are receiving right now is priceless, even if it is mostly bad. It would have taken Amazon years, hundreds of focus groups, and a whole lot of money to field all of the suggestions that they are receiving for free right now on the comment boards of various websites. Why not release a mediocre product and have the consumers do the work for you? It sounds sort of brilliant to me, and based on the fact that Amazon is a behemoth of a company with a lot of great ideas, maybe this was their plan all along. Or maybe the Kindle is just a huge, clunky, 1970s-esque mistake, I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Earlier this week, the nomination process for the 2007 Crunchies began. Together with GigaOm, Read/Write Web, and VentureBeat, TechCrunch has unveiled a new blog dedicated to this first annual award ceremony. The 2007 Crunchies will recognize promising start-ups and this year’s most compelling internet and technology innovations.

TechCrunch and its fellow blog networks have opened up the nomination forum to the entire internet community, encouraging anyone with an opinion to vote for their favorite product or company in a variety of award categories. For example, there will be an award for the best video site, the best consumer start-up, the company with the best use of viral marketing, the best start-up founder, and so on and so forth.

No companies are excluded from the competition, and only one award (for the best international start-up) has geographic limitations. A single company can be nominated for and win multiple awards, but the achievements that qualify the nominees for these awards must be made within the 2007 calendar year. No nomination fees apply, but each voter is limited to one nomination submission per category.

According to the rules stated on the site, “The Crunchies Committee will select the top five nominated companies per award category based on the quantity, quality and breadth of submissions received.” This sounds a little vague to me, and I’m hoping that the committee won’t exert any bias in their decision making, but I sort of like the idea that sheer numbers may not determine all of the nominations.

Between now and Wednesday, December 12, you can nominate your favorite companies and products for a Crunchie. If you are part of an organization that you believe deserves recognition for achievements made in 2007, you can post a badge on your site encouraging users to nominate and vote for you. Find all available badges here.

After the initial nominations, users can submit one ballot per day to be counted toward the final vote. Award winners will be determined based on popular votes received through website voting up until the middle of January. Finalists, event sponsors, and select members of the press will be invited to the award ceremony in San Francisco, which is scheduled to be held on Friday, January 18.

It’s difficult to say how this first award ceremony will play out before the nominees are announced, but I’m hoping for at least a few surprise entries (or underdogs) on the final ballot. The general public has most of the power when it comes to determining the nominees and the winners, and with TechCrunch headlining the event, nominated companies are sure to net some serious publicity and website traffic.

If you know of a few companies that have gone unnoticed this year, submit their names here. I suppose that better-known companies may snag a few (or most) of the Crunchies, but if you’re like me, you’re hoping that the final ballot will include a little diversity. It would feel too redundant if all we saw on the ballot were names of companies that have been making headlines all year long. You probably won’t score your favorite start-up a Crunchie all on your own, but who knows, a glowing nomination from you may get them some of the press that they deserve.

To read more about the 2007 Crunchies from the event co-hosts themselves, take a look at these recent posts at GigaOm, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.