Like everything else in my life in this insane year this post is a day late and a dollar short. The seventh anniversary of this blog was yesterday, December 3. But things in my life kept me from putting the finishing touches on the post and getting it published on the big day. On some level that's unacceptable. On others it is entirely in character this year. But then, maybe we'll see that change in the new year.
Seven years. (and a day) That's how long I've been presenting the Ink Blot Awards as my way of recognizing the anniversary of this blog. It's been a fun ride. It's been full of laughs. I'm hoping this year's awards will also provide a few chuckles to folks who stop by and give them a read. Although the history is mostly ancient and perhaps bordering on the irrelevant, I think it is important to provide some of it as context. So here goes:
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.
So much has changed in the time I started blogging that first year. It's changed with me and also that community has certainly changed. Those around me have changed as well in an eerie parallel to how things with Tablets have changed. Tablets mean different things now-a-days, although some of those who make them seem to have less penchant for success than Microsoft did.
What hasn't changed and what's consistent about Tablets is that they are still the very personal devices that they started out to be. Microsoft never recognized that. Apple did. Others tried to emulate without acknowledging the core reasons for Apple's success. And by and large they failed.
What's also changed is my attitude about politics, cultural happenings, and other things that I observe on this blog. I've also changed how I observe and remark about them. The convenience of Twitter and Google+ take something away from this blog. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I don't.
I've become increasingly disenchanted with quite a few things this year. To be honest, I don't know why. I used to find it all entertaining in a "Human Comedy" sort of way. I don't find it that entertaining anymore. The ins and outs of life begin with the foibles of humans. It used to be that somewhere along the line we acknowledged that, celebrated it, and moved on, bettering ourselves in the process. While I think we still acknowledge it, and we might celebrate it, the only benefit we're deriving by moving on is to repeat the same things over and over again with an increasing frequency. I think this year's Ink Blot Awards reflect that with the number of repeats. Or they reflect my warped sense of things.
This was a year that so many things resulted in a "FAIL" that I think we have to look for a new buzz word for failure. Politics and the circus around it started performing without a tent and nobody cared that the clowns weren't funny any more. It's not that the clowns weren't funny that is maddening. It's depressing that no one cared anymore. Major tech companies became exposed for what can only be described as abhorent stratagies. New gadgets now depend on the same fickle first weekend sales that movies do. Of course if we had better gadgets being released, we'd probably see better results. Social networking became a parody of itself and all of that sharing resulted in a few shares too many or not nearly enough, depending on your perspective. Big media continued to prove that it doesn't have a clue. Little media seems to inexplicably want to follow that path as well. Oh, and Mother Nature reached up and smacked the planet around trying to get our attention. But aside from watching the compelling video and pictures we continued to just be thankful it wasn't us feeling her wrath, and sympathetic to those who did. The 99% became the Tea Party without the tea but with lots of party, because in the end the complaints are the same. For its efforts it got criticized by the 1% for being unorganized, dirty, and partying too much by the 1% that defines itself by making money and not making anything else so it can party. I think the 1% are just jealous because they feel like they have to dress up and shower in order to play their game. There's an old saying in show biz that if you put real life on the stage no one would believe it. I think if you put this last year on the stage, not only wouldn't anyone believe it, but Groupon would have a hard time selling discount tickets to it.
Last year's many repeats were due primarily to me spending the year dealing with my mother's terminal illness and ultimate passing. This year's repeats, I think, deal more with the fact that nothing has really changed. Change used to be a constant. I don't think it is as constant presently. On some levels I find that depressing, on larger levels I find that extremely human. I also find that it focuses those who are looking at life with 20/20 vision into a clearer view that someday may pull us out of the rut we're in.
Any pretense at aspirations aside, the rules for inclusion on the list are the same. Award winners are subject to my own whims and fancies. Some are best in class, some are just frivilous, some deserve the small heaping of scorn these awards might cast their way. Human nature, no matter the field of endeavor, is ripe with that which needs celebrating and that which needs derision cast its way. Good friend, 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. So we'll let it keep sticking. And finally, if you don't like the list, go make your own.
So, as always, hit the jump, cue the dancing girls, beat out a tattoo on the drums, sound the trumpets (or the theremin) and get ready for the Seventh Annual Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards .
Enjoy!
Blogging and the Web
- Best My Self Destructive Bent Actually Helped Me Self Destruct a Little This Year: Michael Arrington
- Best Blogging Move While Remaining True to What Makes Him Popular After Getting a Raw Deal: James Kendrick
- Best Tech Blogger Who Is Now a VC: MG Sielger
- Best I'm Tweeting To Let You Know That I've Moved All My Content to Google+ Except for All of it that I ReTweet on Twitter Award: Mike Elgan
- Best Screw You Arianna Huffington We're Going To Start Our Own Thing Award: Josh Topolsky and the Gang at the Verge
- Best Interim Blogging Strategy in between URLs: This Is My Next...
- Best New Google product: Google+
- Best Failing Google product: GMail
- Best Cancelled Google products: Too Many To Count
- Worst Cancelled Google products: Too Many To Count
- Most Entertaining Gadget Reviewer: Andy Ihnatko
- Best Comeback Podcast: Gillmor Gang
- Best Privacy Is So Complicated When You Don't Really Believe in It Award: Tie-Google and Facebook
- Best New Podcast I Discovered this Year: BagelTech Mac
- Best We Really Made It To the Big Time Because Now We Have Government Overseers Award: Facebook
- Best Apple Rumor: Apple Will Release A New (fill in the blank)
- Best Up and Coming Apple Hater: Nicolas Charbonnier
- Best Way To Attract Followers, Spam, and Bots on Twitter: Mention Apple or Android in a Tweet
- Best Way To Prove Blind Loyalty (or is that FanBoyism): Mention You Like Apple or Android in a Tweet or Blog Post
- Glad He's Blogging Again Award: Rob Bushway
- The We Think Too Much Alike Award: Francine Hardaway
Tablets, Gadgets, Software and Mobile Computing
- Most Disruptive Force in Tech: Apple
- Best We Screwed Up With MobileMe, We're Trying Again with iCloud, But We Still Haven't Figured Out How to Use the Cloud Yet: Apple
- Best Marketed Death Ever: Steve Jobs
- Best Sometimes Timing Works in Your Favor: Walter Issacson and the Steve Jobs Biography
- Best I Don't Care What Everyone Else Is Doing, We're Going to Do It My Way and Still Make Money and They'll Still Call it a Tablet: Jeff Bezos and the Kindle Fire
- Best We Waited, We Saw, We Retreated, We Retrenched, and We Hoped 2011 Would Be Better for Us. It Wasn't and Now We're Moving on to Ultrabooks Until a New Trend Comes Along We Can Follow: All other Tablet/Slate Manufacturers in the Wake of the iPad
- Best Year of the Tablet 2.0 That Wasn't: 2011
- Best What Else Does Apple Make That We Can Copy Since We Failed at Tablets-Oh, Yeah the MacBook Air: Most Computer OEMs
- Best Excuse to Outlaw Beta Products: Honeycomb
- Best We Fell for Our Own Hype with the Year of the Tablet Hype at CES in 2010 and We Fell for it Again in 2011. Fool Me Once Shame on You, Fool Me Twice, Look, I'm a Tablet Manufacturer who Relies on Google: Tablet and Slate Manufacturers
- Best We Really Want Android Tablets to Work So There is Competition Against the iPad so We'll Pretend that They Do: Gadget and Tech Bloggers
- Best We've Got Money and a Good Thing So Let's Blow it All By Not Knowing What We're Doing: HP and the TouchPad and webOS.
- Best You Only Think the Microsoft Kin was the Quickest Pull of a Major Product In Memory: HP and the TouchPad
- Best We're Going to Bet (and lose) Lots of Money on Rumors and Make Some iPhone Cases: Chinese Case Manufacturers
- Best We Believe What We Write: All Those Who Fell for the iPhone 5 Rumor Hype
- Best We Sure Enjoyed Letting You Make Fools of Yourselves: Apple and the iPhone 5 Rumor
- Best Glad We Got Rid of that CEO Guy Move: HP and Leo Apotheker
- Best We Wish We Could Have Gotten Rid of our CEO Guys: RIM
- Best Proof that It's Not About the User It's About Trying to Stay Relevant Even Though We Don't Know What Relevant Means: Motorola, RIM, HP and their ill-fated Tablets
- Best AVIS Award: Samsung for its Tablets.
- Best Gadget Release of the Year: Tie- iPad 2 and Amazon Kindle Fire
- Most Innovative Tablet PC of 2011: No Award Given
- Best Tablet PC Software of 2011: No Award Given
- Best iPad 2 App: Flipboard
- Best Android Tablet App: Task Killer (Pick one, there are too many to count.)
- Best Hey, We Actually Released a Competitor to the iPad and We Sold Some Too but Apple is Using Its Lawyers to Stop Us: Samsung
- Best Tech Lawyers in the Biz: Apple
- Best Way for Companies Who Believe in the Stylus to Get Funding: KickStarter
- Best Major Company Bitch Fight That Is Over: Apple and Adobe
- Best Major New Company Bitch Fight: Apple and Samsung
- Best Steve Jobs Was Right that Our Software Sucks, Damnit: Adobe
- Best Attempt at Reinventing Oneself But With a Hedge: Microsoft for Windows 8
- Best We Don't Get It Ad Slogan in the TabletScape: Your Wife Will Love the NVidia Chipset.
- Best We Can Still Lie with the Best of Them: AT&T
- Best We Sure Hope People Might Go Crazy Over This: Google Chrome Books
- Best Platform Agnostic Software: Tie-Evernote and Dropbox
- Best App I Use Everyday: Instapaper
- Best Feed Reader: Reeder
- Best Inking App for iPad: Penultimate
- Best We Tried to Take Over T-Mobile and Own the Mobile World But Our Lobbyists Must Have Spent the Money On the Wrong Things: AT&T Takeover of T-Mobile
- Best Wallflower Left Standing at the Dance: T-Mobile USA
- Best New Innovation in Mobile Tech That Actually Might Go Somewhere: Siri
- Best We Figured Out the Sex Thing but that Abortion Thing Is Another Matter: Apple and Siri
- Best Proof that Many Bloggers and Reviewers Don't Use the Products They Write About: All Those Who Compared Siri to Existing Voice Products for Other Platforms.
- Best Tech/Game/Cultural Phenomenon That Involves Pigs and Feels Like it is Fading: Angry Birds
- Best Kudzu Like Takeover of Mobile Tech: Android
- Best Oh, Shit, We Better Get On The Stick, Fire Somebody and Finally Do Something Different: HP
- Best Oops We Got Ahead of Ourselves, Our Customers, and Almost Tanked the Company: Netflix
- Best Yeah, You Think You're Gonna Reinvent The Entertainment Industry, So We'll Hold Back Our Content From Your New Internet TV Devices but Then Again You Make Stupid Moves All By Yourself and Don't Need our Help: Big Media and Netflix
- Best Proof Two Heads May Not Be Better than One: RIM
- Best Tech Scandal of the Year: Carrier IQ
- Best Worst Attempt at a Clever Comeback: FusionGarage
- Best Backtrack and Fix the Best Bonehead Improvement of the Previous Year: Apple Removing the Screen Rotation Lock from the case on the iPad and then Restoring It
Cultural, Political and Everything Else
- Best Proof That Humans Will Screw Up Anything If Given Half a Chance and a Majority: The Repbulican and Democratic Parties
- Best Proof That the Only Thing that Comes Out of a Committee is Noise: US Congress
- Best Proof That Mediocrity Can Rise to the Top and Pull Down Anything With Along the Way: John Boehner
- Best Proof That Politics Has Finally Reached Its Nadir: The Republican Debates
- Best Proof that Humanity Has Reached a New Nadir: The Republican Debates
- Best Film of the Year: Hugo
- Best Book of the Year: Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig
- Best TV Series I Watched but Not on TV: Downton Abbey
- Best Proof That We Don't Believe in Things Like Truth and Integrity: Tie-Newt Gingrich, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Debates over The Finanical Mess, and just about any Political Fracas that Has Come Along Recently
- Best Proof That Our Culture of Lying Isn't a Culture After All It's Just Rotting Bacteria: Newt Gingrich
- Best Proof that Elephants Do Have Short Memories: Newt Gingrich
- Best Proof That Rich White Folks Still Like Black Folks as Entertainment: Herman Cain
- Best Proof That We Will Entertain Any Idiot With a Cause as Long as We Don't Really Have to Vote for Them: Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump
- Best Proof That Serious Issues (You know-like the ones we face now) Aren't Really That Serious or Else We Just Don't Care: US Congress
- Best Books That Prove Non-Fiction Can be Scarier Than Fiction: Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig, Capitol Punishment by Jack Abramoff, The Family by Jeff Sharlet, The Black Banners by Ali H. Soufan
- Best Re-Tread Trend that Proves Greed Can Make Even a Technological Advance Seem Like a Joke: 3D
- Best Head Scratcher: We'll Cheer Protests in the Street Demanding Change As Long As They Don't Happen Here and Threaten Our Interests
- The You Knew This Would Be Problematic Award: When Occupy Wall Street Began Occupying Wall Street On a Weekend.
Repeats From Previous Years That Are Still The Best This Year.
- Still the Best Blogger That I Follow: Cliff Gerrish and his blog Echovar
- Still the Best Kept Software Secret that Microsoft Doesn’t Want Anyone To Know About: OneNote
- Still the Best Arrogance: Apple
- Still the Best I Wish I Twittered That for Comic Tweets That Sum It All Up Nicely Award: Rex Hammond
- Still the Best Internet Misanthropes: Tie-Loren Feldman and Andrew Keen
- Still the Best Tablet PC Blogger: Mark Sumocat Sumimoto
- Still the Best Podcast Host: Leo LaPorte
- Still the Best Thorn in Right Wingers Side Award: Shoq
- Still the Best Proof That "Anyone Can Be Replaced” May Not Be Such a Good Maxim Award:David Gregory
- Still the Best Proof That Not Everyone Gets Better With Experience: David Gregory
- Still the Best Proof That Even the Democrats Will Have A Chance: The Republican Party
- Still the Best Crossover Geek Who Does Print and Blogging: Dwight Silverman
- Still the Best Apple Hater: Sascha Pallenberg
- Still the Best and Craziest Black Friday Coverage: Notebooks.com
- Still the Best Twitter List I Follow: The Circle of Mickeleh
- Still the Best How Does He Keep Going: Xavier Lanier
- Still the Best Platform Provocateur: Tie- John Gruber and Paul Thurrott
- Still the Best Read on the Web: Jeff Jarvis
- Still the Craziest Read on the Web: Mike Cane
- Still the Best Game Ever Played on Mankind in the Modern Age: You Have a Right to Privacy
- Still the Best Definition Bender of the Year: 4G
- Still the Best Remind Me Why We Have MVPs: Microsoft
- Still the Best Bitch Fight That Is Getting Old: Google and Apple
- Still the Best We Wish We Could Be in a Bitch Fight Again: Microsoft
- Still the Best Worst Political Collapse Since Zachary Taylor Died: The Obama Administration
- Still the Best Blogger With a Sense of Justice, a Sense of Fairness, and Common Sense: Karoli
Local Ink Blots
- Best Sharing of Local and Other Information: John Mangino
- Best Twitter Local Twitter Bud: Big_In_VA
- Best Local Paper Working Hard to Create Success on the Internet: Northern Va Daily
- Best Local Paper That Is Clueless about Success on the Internet: The Winchester Star (I'd link to them but they are behind a paywall.)
- Best New Media Startup: ShenandoahPress.org
Ink Blots Retired in 2011
- Still the Best Weekly Feature on a Blog for This Week In Mobile Tech Manor: James Kendrick
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
Ink 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, 2009, or 2010
Previous Ink Blot Awards