The Crunchies; 2008 Tech Award Winners, Links and info

The 2008 Crunchies is TechCrunch's second annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

The Awards Ceremony took place at 7:30 pm, Friday, January 9 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

The Crunchies is co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. Best of all, the internet community is invited to choose who wins.

This year’s nominees, runners up and winners (I've turned the 'winners' into links and added screen grabs for those of you unfamiliar with those products or services):

Best Application Or Service: Google Reader

Above: screen grab of the winner; Google Reader

Get Satisfaction
Google Reader (winner)
Minted
Meebo
MySpace Music (runner-up)
Yelp

Best Technology Innovation/Achievement: Windows Live Mesh

Above: screen grab of the winner; Windows Live Mesh

Facebook Connect (runner-up)
Google Friend Connect
Google Chrome
Windows Live Mesh (winner)
Swype
Yahoo BOSS

Best Design: Cooliris

Above: screen grab of the winner; Cooliris

Animoto (runner-up)
Cooliris (winner)
Friendfeed
Infectious
Lala
Sliderocket

Best Bootstrapped Startup: GitHub

Above: screen grab of the winner; GitHub

BackType
GitHub (winner)
Socialcast
StatSheet
12seconds.tv (runner-up)

Most Likely To Make The World A Better Place: GoodGuide

Above: screen grab of the winner; GoodGuide

Akoha
Causes
CO2Stats
GoodGuide (winner)
Kiva (runner-up)
Better Place

Best Enterprise Startup: Amazon Web Services

Above: screen grab of the winner; Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (winner)
Force.com
Google App Engine (runner-up)
Yammer
Zoho

Best International Startup: eBuddy

Above: screen grab of the winner; eBuddy

eBuddy (winner)
Fotonauts
OpenX
Vente-privee
Wuala (runner-up)

Best Clean Tech Startup: Project Frog

Above: screen grab of the winner; Project Frog

Better Place (runner-up)
Boston Power
ElectraDrive
Laurus Energy
Project Frog (winner)

Best New Gadget/Device: iPhone 3G

Above: screen grab of the winner; iPhone 3G

Android G1 (runner-up)
Ausus EEE 1000 Series
Flip MinoHD
iPhone 3G (winner)
SlingCatcher

Best Time Sink Site/Application: Tap Tap Range

Above: screen grab of the winner; Tap Tap Range

Mob Wars
iBowl
Tap Tap Range (winner)
Zivity
Texas Hold Em (runner-up)

Best Mobile Startup: Evernote

Above: screen grab of the winner; Evernote

ChaCha (runner-up)
Evernote (winner)
Posterous
Qik Skyfire
Truphone

Best Mobile Application: Imeem Mobile

Above: screen grab of the winner; Imeem Mobile

Google Mobile Application (runner-up)
imeem mobile (winner)
Pandora Radio
rolando
ShopSavvy
Ocarina

Best Startup Founders: Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey & Biz Stone of Twitter

Above: screen grab of the winners; Twitter's Founders

Linda Avery and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe)
Michael Birch and Xochi Birch (Bebo)
Robert Kalin (Etsy)
Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone (Twitter ) (winner)
Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh, Bret Taylor (FriendFeed ) (runner-up)

Best Startup CEO: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

Above: screen grab of the winner; Mark Zuckerberg

Tony Hsieh (Zappos)
Jason Kilar (Hulu) (runner-up)
Elon Musk (SpaceX)
Andy Rubin (Android)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) (winner)

Best New Startup Of 2008: FriendFeed

Above: screen grab of the winner; FriendFeed
Dropbox (runner-up)
FriendFeed (winner)
GoodGuide
Tapulous
Topsin Media
Yammer

Best Overall Startup In 2008: Facebook

Above: screen grab of the winner; my own facebook profile

Amazon Web Services
Facebook (winner)
Android
hulu
Twitter (runner-up)

Russian Born Artist Yulia Brodskaya's Paper Graphics

Russian born Yulia Brodskaya is a talented artist, graphic designer, typographer, and most impressively, paper sculptor. Her works are used in both commercial and personal applications and her paper graphics are precious 3D sculptures that incorporate all her talents into one art form. Take a look at some of them:











In light of my recent post about the popularity of Hedgehogs in design, I must share with you her hedgehog illustrations:



About the artist:


Yulia born in Russia where she started out as a fine artist producing contemporary office decoration artwork for Moscow based companies while studying for her first degree in Graphic Design. In 2004 she moved to London, earned her M.A. in Graphic Communication and since then has been busy with parallel careers as an illustrator and a freelance graphic designer.

Awards: 1st prize in the Russian Conceptual Packaging Design Competition; in recognition of typographic achievement she was elected a Member of the International Society of Typographic Designers (2006). Clients include Orange, RedBull, BBH, How2 T-shirts, International Organ Festival, ARMI, Touchnote cards and CUBE magazine.

She says "I'm constantly experimenting and evolving, always pushing my style in new directions: my greatest passion is to explore the ways of combining illustration and typography."

www.artyulia.com

A special thanks to Betsy Wills for pointing out Yulia's work to me!

Contact:e-mail: yulia@artyulia.com

If you like cut paper art, you cannot miss the amazing work of Peter Callesen and Helen Musslewhite

Kacper Hamilton's 7 Deadly Wine Glasses

7 hand-blown red wine glasses created to depict the 7 deadly sins. Designed by Kacper Hamilton of Hamilton design, each glass encapsulates a sin, which is revealed through the ritual of drinking.


Gluttony:



Sloth:

Wrath:


Envy:


Greed:



Lust:


Pride:



Glasses are available individually, as a set of four or six (of the same glass), or as a complete set. The full set of all seven glasses comes in a mahogany box as shown below. Limited Edition of 25.



contact info for the designer:
Kacper Hamilton
kacperhamilton@mac.com
phone: +44 (0) 7957 441405


Buy the limited edition glasses separately or as a set from here as long as they are available.

Über Cool Cabinets: The Horizontals & Horizontals A-line Cupboards

The Horizontals, originally designed in 1999 by Shigeru Uchida for Pastoe, a high end furniture company in the Netherlands, are a series of wall-mounted cabinets that slide horizontally to reveal compartments made of aluminum and wood.

We've Heard Of Art As Currency, But What About Currency As Art?

My Money, My Currency by Hanna von Goeler

"My currency work originated in California, while I was studying at UC Davis. I was very interested in camouflage at the time. This interest led me to create my first paintings on dollar bills, between 1992-94, in which I camouflaged/painted images onto and into bills. A death in the family led me to the east coast, and faced with the costs of living in New York City on an artist’s budget, I continued to paint on money."