Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2: The Fifth Annual Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards

Here we go again with another edition of the Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards, this time for year number 5. As I’ve said each year since year 2 of these awards there is no better description as to why they exist, or why I created them, than what I said the first year. So, here are those remarks, which I’ll revise and extend.

I created The Life On The Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards as a celebration. Yes, it's a celebration of the 1 year anniversary of this blog. But it is more than that. It is a celebration of a community that I have come to know and admire. The Tableteers that make up the Tablet PC Community are an amazing collection of individuals who know and work with the Tablet PC platform. They are fiercely protective of it, insatiably curious about advancing it, very intelligent, often wickedly funny, at one time very forgiving and patient, and in the same breath, scathingly critical when the need arises. They are also exceedingly willing to evangelize the platform to anyone who will listen, and in my humble opinion, have helped keep the spotlight on The Tablet PC in ways that may, in the long run, prove to be responsible for keeping the platform thriving.

This will probably be the last year that I can repeat those words as that community and its passion that helped provide the inspiration is spinning off into all sorts of new directions. Even more so than last year. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Tablet PCs as we’ve known them from the past are very much a niche product, except when they are a rumor that occupies the world’s attention. Once again, anyone looking for anything new on the Tablet front has to pretend to be a Cubs fan and “wait until next year.” Last year this award appeared: The We’d Love to See It, Love to Buy It, But Don’t Think You’re Ever Going to Produce It Award: TechCrunch Tablet. A day or so before these awards appeared, Michael Arrington, the Father of the Crunchpad, declared it dead. Such are the times, such are the trials, and such are the tales of those who love Tablets.

2009 was the year that social media turned from the topic to the only topic. Twitter exploded. Facebook bought Friendfeed. And you can now use location services to locate, well just about anything or anybody. Except of course for those folks who don’t like to be social or locatable, but that’s another story. Mobile devices finally saw some real entries in various categories including MIDs, UMPCs, and of course Netbooks and Smartphones. The biggest difficulty is that the majority of entries in most categories look more like odd independent films trying to find distribution. Netbooks are still a dominate story, as is the iPhone. It was a year of comebacks (or at least attempts at a comeback) for some, (Microsoft, UMPCs, Motorola, and Palm), and failure for others. The last quarter of the year also saw open warfare breakout among some of the big guns (Google, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon). Amazon’s Kindle saw competitors start to spring up all around, although most won’t really hit the market until 2010 (Sony must hate the fact that they keep getting looked over). Touch became the big thing. So big that now everyone is wondering what to do with it. The usage case beyond the small screen just hasn’t been made.

Politics continued here on Wicked Stage, but blogging about it faded somewhat. Not that my interest has faded, but my cynical distaste for the perversion that we call politics today increased to the point where any time I began to blog about something political, I felt actual bile in my throat. After watching a president succeed in weakening the office he held for eight years, we’ve witnessed the effective complete castration of that office in less than Obama’s first year. All sides are at fault here and I find it far too saddening and maddening to think that we’ve been witness (and participant) to the end of the American presidency as an institution. When you mix that up with the complete collapse of Congress as an institution that anyone has any trust in it is a tragic prospect for this country’s future. But yet that game continues, as do most. Yes, there will be some political Ink Blots this year, along with a few other new categories as well.

And speaking of the awards, as always the rules for nomination and inclusion (some dubious, some for actual best in class, some just for frivolity) are my own and completely subject to my own whims and fancies. Human nature, no matter the field of endeavor, is ripe with that which needs celebrating and that which needs derision cast its way. Curiously, and perhaps sadly, there are a lot of repeats this year. Especially on the derision side of the ledger.

Good friend, and now second year Tablet PC MVP and fellow GBM contributor, Mark “Sumocat” Sumimoto, christened these awards with the nickname of ‘The Blotties’ in year one, and that sorta stuck. I’m still unable to afford some sort of bash where those honored can get blotto while celebrating, so, buy yourself your favorite beverage, (and when we meet up, buy me one too), cue the dancing girls, beat out a tattoo on the drums, sound the trumpets (or the theremin) and get ready for the Fifth Annual Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards.

Enjoy!

Repeats From Last Year That Are Still the Best This Year.

Still the Best Blogger That I Follow: Cliff Gerrish and his blog Echovar
Still the Best Tech and News Aggregator: Newsgang.net
Still the Most Contentious and Most Fun SOB on the Internet Who Can Combine Politics, Enterprise Issues, Social Networking Issues, and Culture Into One Big Delicious Feast Whether You’re Tasting It From a Blog, Twitter or Podcast: Steve Gillmor
Still the Best Stall Surfing Device: iPhone or iPod Touch
Still the Best Worst Kept Secret in the Tabletscape: N-Trig Digitizers Have Problems
Still the Best CES Tablet PC, UMPC, Mobile Tech Meeting Organizer Ever: Lora Heiny
Still the Best Theremin Playing Blogger on the Internet (and also a good dancer): Larry Dahlke
Still the Most Fun You Can Have In Vegas Hotel Room With A Bunch of Mobile Computing Guys-Wait That Didn't Come Out Right-Award: The GBM Team at CES 2009
Still the Best Kept Software Secret that Microsoft Doesn’t Want Anyone To Know About: OneNote
Still the Best Arrogance: Apple

Blogging and the Web

Best Tech Blogger Who I Wish Was Still Blogging Award: Rob Bushway
The I’m The King of Netbooks and Just About Anything Else I Cover Award: Sascha Pallenberg
Best Tech Blogger I Discovered This Year Award: Dwight Silverman
The I Can Mod Anything, Video Anything, and Love Any Small Mobile Device I Get My Hands On and Think You Should Too Award: jkkmobile
The I Won’t Give up on MIDs Award: Steve “Chippy” Paine
Best Netbook Blogger: Brad at Liliputing
Best Weekly Feature Columns on a Blog: jkOnTheRun
Best Weekly Feature on a Blog for This Week In Mobile Tech Manor: James Kendrick
Best I Can Go Free Lance and Still Have Impact Award: Joanna Stern
Best We Know How to Screw a Good Thing Up and Seem to Want to Do It Over and Over Again Award: Apple for the App Store
Best I Wish I Twittered That for Comic Tweets That Sum It All Up Nicely Award: Rex Hammond
Best I Want To Cut My Nose Off To Spite My Face Award: Rupert Murdoch
Best Why Do We Call It Windows Live Essentials When it is Essentially the Slowest Download of Any Cloud App There Is Award: Windows Live Essentials
Best Internet Misanthropes: Tie-Loren Feldman and Andrew Keen
Best We Pulled the Wool Over Their Eyes By Simply Renaming the Product Award: Joby for the GorillaPod Mobile
Best New Mobile Solution of the Year: The Novatel MiFi Card
Best I’m Going to be the Last Nokia Fan Blogging and Standing Award: Matt Miller
Best CES Hangout with Great People and Great Bandwidth Award: CntrStge
Best New Trend that Will Turn Into a Bust Award: Augmented Reality
Most Fickle and Most Fun Social Networking Advocate Award: Robert Scoble
The Steve Jobs Got His Liver Back, Now I can Blog as Fake Steve Jobs Again Award: Dan Lyons.
Best New Gadget Blogging/Service: GDGT
Best Overall Tech Blog This Year: SlashGear
Best Blogger This Year: MG Sielger
Biggest Disappointment of the Year: The Crunchpad is Dead
Biggest Mystery of the Year: The Demise of the Crunchpad.
Best Google Sharer: Louis Gray
Best Stupid Trademark Fight: Tie-Smartbooks/Smartbook AG and Netbooks/Psion
Best We’ve got over 100,000 Apps and You Still Can’t Find What You Need Award: The App Store
Best Who’d A Thunk We’d Have So Many Fart Apps Award: The App Store
Best We’ve Got a Real Platform Now Because We Have Fart Apps Award: Palm Pre
Best We’ve Got a Trend Coming But We Haven’t Quite Figured It All Out Yet Award: Real Time Web
Best Web 2.0 Success that Seems to Change Things Far Too Frequently, Making it Look Like They are Either Bored or Devoid of Imagination Award: Facebook
Saddest Purchase of a Web 2.0 App: Friendfeed Bought By Facebook
Best Twitter App: Desktop-Tweetdeck. iPhone-Tweetie
Best We’ve Got Less Fail Whales Than We Used To But We Can Still Fail When You Need Us Most Award: Twitter
Best Suggested User List: No Award for This Kind of Stupidity
Best I Wish It Would Get Here Sooner Than Later Award: Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy
Best Tablet PC Blogger: Mark Sumocat Sumimoto
Best Imitation of MIDs by Delaying Getting Products to Market Award: Smartbooks
The I Always Know Where To Find Her Because of Her Use of GeoLocation Services Award: Francine Hardaway
The Blogger I’d Like to Have a Beer With Award: MG Siegler
Best I Cheated Death So Don’t Mess With Me Award: Steve Jobs
Best We’ve Conquered Marketing, Made You Love Us, and So We Can Do What We Want, Wait…. What’s That App Store Problem Award: Apple
Best New Boss Award: Xavier Lanier
Best Geek I Follow on Twitter Even Though I Don’t Agree with What He/She Says Award: Tie-Michael Gartenberg and Chris Leckness
Best New Acquaintance I’ve Made on Twitter: @Big_In_Va
Best Local Twitterer: @laurak23
Best I Wish My Puppet Was Better Than @1938 Media’s Puppets Award: Mossberg Puppet
I Avoided a Credibility Scandal By the Skin of My Teeth and My Singing Award: David Pogue

Tablet PCs, Gadgets, Software and Mobile Computing

Best Tablet PC With Windows 7 and Touch: Lenovo X200T
Best I’m Anxious to see a Windows 7 Tablet PC Model: HP Elitebook Series
Best New Tablet PC Software of 2009: No Award Given
Best Tablet PC Screw Up of the Year: Dell for Not Having Drivers Ready for the Only Tablet PC with Capacitive Digitizer When Windows 7 Released.
Best Excuse for Best Tablet PC Screw Up: Dell for saying The Latitude XT was legacy hardware
Best We Have No Idea What Tablets Are or What They Should Be: Tie-Most of the media, blogosphere, and OEMs.
Best Rumor of the Year: The Apple Tablet
Best Rumor of a Delay for a Rumored Device: The Apple Tablet
Best Disruptive Rumor: The Apple Tablet
Best Attempt at De-Throning the iPhone: Verizon Droid
Best Advertising Smackdown of AT&T: There’s a Map for That.
Worst Comeback to an Advertising Smackdown: AT&T
Best Divorce: Google and Apple
Best Design Don’t Mean Squat if Your Product is Free: Google
Best We Tried to De-Throne the iPhone: Palm-Pre
Best Our Market Share Might Be Decreasing but We Still Take Our Time Because We Own most of the Third World: Nokia
The Paul Masson Award for Releasing No Product Before Its Time: Tie-Microsoft and Nokia
Best We Really Screwed Up With Vista So Let’s Let Everybody, and I Do Mean Everybody, Use Windows 7 Free for a Year: Microsoft
Best Imitation of Apple’s Retail Strategy: Microsoft
Best Platform Agnostic Sync Software: DropBox
Best Personal Cloud Solution: PogoPlug
Best Platform Agnostic Software: Evernote
Best We Know We Can Announce It, Not Deliver It For A Year and Completely Make Our Competitors Scramble: Google Chrome OS
Best App Released That No One Can Figure Out Except for Gina Trapani: Google Wave
The It Only Works To Run Out of Stock at Christmas From a Newly Launched Product if You’re First In the Market: Barnes & Noble and the Nook
Best Look No Further If You Want Proof That the MainStream Media Deserves All the Problems It Has Award: Tie-Balloon Boy, Michael Jackson’s Death, The State Dinner Crashers, The Ft. Hood Massacre

Podcasts

Best Podcast That I’m Glad Is Back: The Gillmor Gang
Best New Tech Podcast: This Week In Google
Best Podcast Host: Leo LaPorte
Best Podcast Sidekick: Andy Ihnatko

Cultural, Political, and Everything Else

Best Time Waster That Is Changing The Way We Do Everything: Social Networking
The We Shall Own The World and You Will Pay Award: Comcast
The You Don’t Know if I’m Bluffing or Serious But I Still Think Google is Stealing My Content and You Are Paying Attention If Not Money Award: Rupert Murdoch
Best Keeper of the Flame and Attempts to Keep the Health Care Debates on Track Award: Karoli
Best Entertainment Story of the Year: Susan Boyle
Best Movie of the Year: Up
Best Thorn in Right Wingers Side Award: Shoq
Best Book I Read This Year: Too Big To Fail
Scariest Book I Read This Year: The Family
The Proof That Humans Will Screw Up Anything If Given Half A Chance Award: The Democratic Party
Best We Had It We’re Probably Going To Lose It: Obama Administration
The Proof that The Lowest Common Denominator Still is the Most Powerful Magnet in Our Universe Award: Glenn Beck
The Sarah Palin Award for Having Audacity Even Though She Doesn’t Know How To Spell It Award: Michele Bachmann
The Michele Bachmann Award for Outrageousness Award: Sarah Palin
The Proof That Life Doesn’t Begin at Conception Award and May Never Begin for Some Award: The Tea Party Gang
Best I Gave Into the Dark Side and Now I’m Worse Than That I Purport to Hate Award: Keith Olbermann
The Proof That :Anyone Can Be Replaced” May Not Be Such a Good Maxim Award: David Gregory

Looking Ahead

Predicted Game Changers for 2010: Google, Apple, Android
Best Rumor of 2010: Apple Tablet
Best I Changed My Mind But I Forced Your Hand: Rupert Murdoch

Ink Blots Retired in 2007

Best Tablet PC Software Site: Tablet PC Post
Most Consistent and Most Creative Ink Blogger: Mark Sumocat Sumimoto
Best All Father of Tablet PCs: James Kendrick (What's an All Father anyway?)
Best Annual Wish List For Santa That Makes All Geeks Think About Committing Crimes To Purchase All The Cool Gadgets: Linda Epstein of TabletPC2.com

In Blots Retired in 2006

Most Obnoxious Tableteer Laugh: Tie-Robert Scoble and myself. (The only reason it is a tie is Scoble's laugh is heard more than mine.)
Best and Most Frequent Use Of The Word "Cool" in a Tablet PC Blog Post or Podcast: James Kendrick
Best First Family Of Tablet PCs: The Heiny's
Best Tablet PC Batman Fan: Marc Orchant

No Awards were Retired in 2008.

Previous Ink Blot Awards