awards

The nominations for the Webby Awards, that annual extravaganza of accolades for just about anything connected to the Internet, have been announced. Leading the pack of nominees for the 13th annual Webbys are The New York Times' nytimes.com with 13 nominations, NBC.com with 12, and The Onion with 8. There are, in case you were counting, two nominations for Fail Blog.

There are also plenty of video productions nominated, like FunnyorDie.com's "Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad" and "Children's Hospital," the comedy series on TheWB.com starring "The Daily Show&… Read more

The winner of the 2008 ACM AM Turing Award for lasting and major technical contributions to the computing community was announced last month as Barbara Liskov, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Turing Award, which is named after British mathematician Alan Turing, has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery every year since 1966. Past winners include Vint Cerf, Google's Internet evangelist and commonly called the "father of the Internet."

Liskov, who heads up the programming methodology group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT--where she has conducted research and … Read more

I'm not a fan of the Grammy awards--I think they offer too many awards and give the big ones to too many has-beens or otherwise undeserving acts--but this year's show, scheduled for Sunday, sounds like the best in years. In particular, several blogs are posting rumors that Radiohead will be playing with the University of Southern California marching band, as Outkast did a few years back.

The rumors vary on song selection, but my bet's on "15 Step"--that electronic percussion intro would be perfect for a marching band drum corps. Add to that performances … Read more

We Live in Public, a sort of cautionary story about the Web's impact on our lives, grabbed one of the Sundance Film Festival's top honors Saturday, the Grand Jury Prize for documentary films.

The film was directed by Ondi Timoner, who gave CNET an inside look last week at the life of a filmmaker about to screen her work to an audience for the very first time. It covers a tumultuous decade in the life of Josh Harris, whom Timoner refers to as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of."

During the 1990s dot-com … Read more

On Saturday, CNET, in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, handed out its Best of CES 2009 Awards, including Best in Show and the People's Voice Award. And this year's big winner? The Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre smartphone took home both honors and became the first cell phone/smartphone to win the Best in Show since CNET started presenting the Best of CES awards in 2006. The Palm Pre went up against some stiff competition, including the Sony DSC-G3 and the Sony P-series Lifestyle PC. So why the Pre?

Well, it was a combination of things. First, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Friday night's Crunchies awards were host to more than 80 different nominated start-ups and large Web services. The winners, which had been chosen by once-a-day user voting since late November, were finally announced to an audience of approximately 900 people in the Herbst Theater here in downtown San Francisco.

Of the 16 different categories for awards, I've highlighted four of the most noteworthy winners and losers below. You can see the whole list of nominees and winners over here.

Winners

Microsoft's Live Mesh picked up the award for Best Technology Innovation/Achievement.It's an important service for Microsoft, … Read more

2009 Nissan GT-R

In December we invited you to vote for the 2008 Tech Car of the Year from our five nominees. Well, no upset this year, as our staff judges agreed with the voting public: the 2009 Nissan GT-R is our Tech Car of the Year. Nissan has been putting top-notch cabin tech into its Infiniti models, and applied the same gear to the GT-R. But that's only the beginning, as you can almost feel the circuitry running through the GT-R's advanced suspensions and road-holding systems. Likewise, the engine is a pretty impressive piece of engineering, bringing in supercar acceleration from a V-6, not to mention the new double-clutch gearbox.

The GT-R has some faults, such as the overly stiff ride, which isn't really mitigated by the Comfort setting for the suspension. And we had some staff disagreement about that double-clutch gearbox: Brian Cooley found problems with using it in traffic, while Wayne Cunningham felt it worked very smoothly. But we couldn't deny the tech tour de force that the Nissan GT-R represents.

… Read more

Hey, there, you awesome bunch of readers. I have a favor to ask. If you like The Cheapskate, would you consider nominating it for a 2009 Weblog Award?

I feel guilty--downright cheap, in fact--for asking, but, well, it's one of the best ways I know of to spread the word about the blog.

All you have to do is head to the Weblog Awards site and nominate at least three different blogs. (Hey, as long as I've got my hat in hand, mind throwing a nom at Business Hacks, too? That's two right there!)

What's the … Read more

Sunday night at the Spike Video Game Awards, Grand Theft Auto IV was awarded game of the year honors, beating out Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Burnout Paradise, and a slew of other great games that didn't make the cut.

From a sales perspective, it's tough to argue with the logic--GTA IV set sales records earlier this year, selling 2.5 million copies in its first week and 5.04 million units since its release. Although the total units sold mark doesn't set any records, GTA IV obliterated every other known sales record and was met with considerable reviewer praise. I'd venture to say that it was the best Grand Theft Auto title in its storied history.

But does that make it the best game of the year?

To say GTA IV is the best game of 2008 isn't such an easy decision to make. If we purely base it off sales, then I guess it's impossible to pick any other game. But if we look at the value each game provides, I'm not so sure GTA IV deserves the top spot.… Read more