Live: The Crunchies 2010

This blog post is breathing. It’s being updated every few minutes, or as fast as I can hit save. Enjoy the live blogging!

Techcrunch put on a great show this evening at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Crunchies are the geek version of the Grammys. Startups are ranked, refactored, and reviewed over the course of a year on different categories. Here are all of the nominees.

Mike Arrington introduced the event.

Best Internet Application

Every application that you use is up for grabs here. The nominees for this category are Chartbeat, Greplin (personal search engine), Pandora (internet radio to the max, over 60 million users), UJam, and Rdio.

It’s interesting that the two “best” internet applications were both radio/music-based: Pandora, and Rdio (gold and silver, respectively).

Tom Conrad from Pandora:

Best Mobile App

Bump, Hashable, Instagram, and Chomp were the nominees. But Google Maps won the award (not really fair). I do use it 50 times a day, but still, let the little guy take home an award.

Best Social App

Marissa Mayer spoke about social apps. “Where’s the Crunchies’ badge for tonight?”

Foursquare, GroupMe, and Twitter (silver) were among the finalists, but DailyBooth was the winner. Everytime I’ve ever logged into DailyBooth, I’ve posted a photo of myself. I don’t really engage too much, but it’s easy to get sucked in. It’s more social than Twitter?

Best Social Commerce App

Social commerce is the best commerce. ShopKick took second but Groupon pulled in the gold. C’mon guys, Groupon is already a verb.

Interview: Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter

Arrington spoke to Costolo candidly, “You just lost to DailyBooth in ‘Best Social App’”.

“So far, Twitter has been too cool for revenue. Are you thinking, 2010, for that?,” said Arrington. Costolo said, he’s not worried about it. When asked when he does worry about, he said international, scaling, and organization is an operational challenge.

Best Location Based Service

Location is everywhere.

Best New Device

A device is something you hold in your hand, there is no other way to define it.

Boxee, Chrome (huh?), iPad, Kno were nominated. XBox Kinect came in second and you can guess what came in first: iPad.

As an iPad user, I really do think it’s the best device out there. You can’t put it down once you start playing with it. It’s efficient, extraordinary, and entertaining. And you can take it anywhere.

Best Technology Achievement

Google - Self-driving cars. “I’m glad everyone envisions a cleaner, safer future”.

Best Design

Oooo, design. It’s the thing that makes you look longer and harder at a website. You appreciate visual beauty, and so do the Crunchies judges.

The winner is… Gogobot.

Best Touch Interface

iPad/iPod wasn’t even mentioned. But the winner is an iPad app called Flipboard.

Best Bootstrapped Startup

Bootstrapping means self-sustaining. That means they built something with nothing.

Some finalists worth mentioning: Easel, Fast Society, and Techmeme (a great tech news aggregator). Addmired pulled away with the gold, and Instapaper got silver.

Best Enterprise

Enterprise apps play a huge part of streamlining a company’s business. BuddyMedia beats our Salesforce and 37Signals for the win.

Best Clean Tech

I’ve never heard of any of the companies mentioned in this category. The winner was .

Best Time Sink Application

Descibed as, “ways to waste time when you’re unemployed”. If you had a week to visit any website, what would it be? You can only spend time on this website?

Crunchies judges voted for CityVille over Angry Birds, Quora, and Netflix! Damn.

Angel of the Year

Angel investors do the hard work of finding the most promising startups. Ron Conway came in second because you can’t win a Crunchie two years in a row. Paul Graham took home this year’s award with his awesome portfolio over at YCombinator.

VC of the Year (individual)

Yuri Milner, from DST, won. Arrington said, “you are a source of stress for the VC community”. He says that because DST is so freaking good. Milner likes to bet high on the best investments: Facebook, Groupon and Zynga. He actually didn’t answer any of Arrington’s questions…

Best International

What’s awesome outside the US? Spotify won last year. This year, it was ViKi, which looks awesome.

Founder of the Year

Mark Pincus, from Zynga, picked up this award. 425 million people play social games using Zynga’s platform. That’s more than the population of the US.

CEO of the Year

Zuck couldn’t win this one two years in a row, so the award went to the cash cow Groupon. It’s scary how big those guys are. Mason deserves it though. He could probably be a stand-up comedian too.

Best New StartUp or Product of 2010

To decide this category, they put all of the CEOs of the nominees in the room and they all yelled Robert Scoble’s name to see where he went.

I’m not surprised that Quora won. It’s absolutely the most interesting site on the web today.

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010

Drumroll please? Twitter!! I had to save the best for last. For all of you guys who think tweeting is for twits, get with the program. Twitter is the best message platform ever.

See you at next year’s Crunchies.

Apple's Jobs takes medical leave, remains CEO; Succession planning in focus

Cook takes over day to day as CEO Jobs takes medical leave.

Apple said Monday that CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave to focus on his health. He will remain CEO.

As Jobs takes his leave, Tim Cook, chief operating officer will take over Apple’s day-to-day operations. In early 2009, Jobs went on a medical leave for six months in early 2009 to have a liver transplant. During that time, Cook filled in and Apple didnג€™t miss a beat. Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor.

Here’s what Jobs sent to Apple employees:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Appleג€™s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

The news is likely to put Apple succession planning back on the front burner. Earlier this month, a pension fund proposed that Apple become more forthcoming about its succession planing for Jobs, who is a pancreatic cancer survivor. Details of Jobs’ latest medical leave were disclosed.

In that proposal, which was detailed in Apple’s proxy statement, the Central Laborers Pension Fund in Jacksonville, Ill. argued that Apple do the following:

• Appleג€™s board will review the succession plan each year;
• Develop criteria for the CEO position and a process to evaluate candidates;
• Identify internal candidates;
• Begin a ג€œnon-emergency CEO succession planningג€ process, three years before a transition;
• Report the succession plan to shareholders each year.

Apple urged a vote against the proposal.

Jobs’ latest medical leave is likely to put the succession planning on the front burner again. Here are a few thoughts since Jobs’ health will be a key issue again.

• The medical leave hand-off at Apple has been well established from the first time Jobs took time off. Cook has proven that he can run Apple on a day-to-day basis.
• There will be more probing about Jobs’ health and what exactly he’s doing. Obviously, Jobs wants his privacy, but shareholders are going to want more details.
• The succession planning proposal in Apple’s proxy statement may get more serious consideration as Jobs take leave.
• Details of the duration of Jobs’ medical leave are likely to impact Apple shares. If it’s a short leave—quite possible since Jobs is still CEO—then the damage will be minimal.
• Now it’s clear why Cook is one well-paid operating chief. Cook made $59 million in Apple’s fiscal year.

Related: Pondering Apple in a post-Jobs world

Nick Clegg's hung parliament dilemma made into musical

Nick Clegg had to choose which party to side with in a hung parliament

Continue reading the main story

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A hip hop musical based on Nick Clegg's role in forming the coalition is to be staged in Suffolk in the spring.

"Nicked" will dramatise the Lib Dem leader's "struggle to decide which way to go" when the general election resulted in a hung parliament.

Steven Atkinson, artistic director of the HighTide Festival in Suffolk, said "They are all in there, Cameron, Clegg, Brown and the Milibands."

He added that as Mr Clegg acted as a student, he might see the funny side.

The play is due to be staged from 30 April - just before the 5 May referendum on changing the voting system, a key concern of Mr Clegg's. Mr Atkinson said it would continue to be written until the last minute.

He said: "The genesis of it comes from a writer called Richard Marsh. He is a left-wing performance poet and has teamed up with DJ Natalia Sheppard who has given it an urban score.

"The narrative is that in the first half we have the formation of the coalition and Clegg's struggle to decide which way to go. They are all in there - Cameron, Clegg, Brown and the Milibands."

"There is a brilliant scene when Cameron has to go to the Conservative Party to convince them the coalition is the way to go and they have a 'rap off'."

Mr Clegg enjoyed a huge boost in poll ratings during the general election campaign, thanks to his performance in the televised leaders' debates.

But when the election resulted in a hung parliament, as leader of the third largest party he had to decide whether to back the Conservatives, who won the most seats, or Labour. Former party leader Lord Ashdown described it as a "torture mechanism" for the Lib Dems.

The party entered coalition with the Conservatives, but have taken much criticism for abandoning a pre-election pledge not to vote for a rise in university tuition fees.

Mr Atkinson said it would chart the "rise and fall of Nick Clegg" and the first half of the play would focus on the coalition talks, but it was still being written and would be as up to date as possible.

Among politicians to have found their stories dramatised on television in recent years are David Blunkett, John Prescott, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the Miliband brothers.

Appearances on stage are fewer, although Labour MP Tom Levitt starred in his own, one-man play about the MPs' expenses scandal last year.

The cast for "Nicked" has not yet been decided but Mr Atkinson has hopes it could go to the West End.

Mr Clegg became deputy prime minister in the coalition government - but asked if he was in charge while David Cameron is in the Middle East, he was quoted by the free Metro newspaper as saying: "Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that."

Asked about the remarks in a TV interview, Mr Cameron dismissed them as a "throwaway line". The prime minister said: "I'm not absent, that is the way government works. In the age of the BlackBerry, the telephone, the internet, just because I leave the country doesn't mean I am not in charge."