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.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 and is filed under New gadgets, Tech companies, Tech events.
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