The 2011 T3 Gadget Awards – What Did We Learn?
Everyday, it seems like, a new technological advancement pops up in news-feeds and broadcasts everywhere. In homage to these inventions and innovations, the Technological community all comes together to vote on the most ground breaking of these advances, and the winners are announced at the T3 Gadget Awards Ceremony. Over 960,000 votes were cast this year, and the winners ultimately chosen with the help of a 6 person expert panel. Listed here are a number of interesting—and sometimes ironic—choices for winners. Please visit the full list of categories and winners here.
Ironic Winners
One of the most interesting aspects of the Awards are the categories themselves. They run the gamut of technology, and aren’t completely focused on gadgetry. For example, there’s the Best Retailer award and even the Gadget Personality of the Year award. It is in this category that one can find an ironic choice: Mark Zuckerberg. Although his influence on modern communication can’t be ignored, few would debate that he’s got Clooney-like charisma. And then there’s the category of Best Commuting Device in which anything that helps you get from here to there can be included. So, the electric bicycle nominee may appear like an obvious choice. The winner, in fact, was the Amazon Kindle — which makes “getting there” easier, as long as you’re not riding the electric bicycle while reading it!
Influential Winners
Another interesting revelation can be found in the voters’ decision that Twitter is the “Digital Media Service of the Year.” Sure, Zuckerberg’s got the Personality, but Twitter won the bigger battle. To be sure, the principals of large corporations like Apple, Google and Facebook are probably not crying themselves to sleep because they didn’t win a Gadget gong. It is notable, however, that more votes were generated for Twitter than any other medium by the tech community themselves. Those in-the-know with plenty of influence should be taken very seriously by the tech giants. Quite simply, Facebook can’t rest on its laurels (just look at MySpace for reference).
Surprising Winners
If you were to ask the average passerby which phone would win Phone of the Year, most would probably say the iPhone 4. Again, though, because a very tech-savvy crowd cast the votes, the votes went to Samsung’s Galaxy S II. Google won the Tech Brand of the Year, beating out rivals Apple and Facebook. Although it’s just the “T3 Gadget Awards,” Google is in a far better position among the tech community in terms of brand recognition and perhaps overall importance.
Ultimately, The 2011 T3 Gadget Awards offer an intriguing insight into just how much and how fast technology is evolving. If you were to go back to the first awards given in 2008, some of the heavy hitters of the time are no longer viable, while some upstarts were just getting their feet on the ground and are huge players today. Although these awards are given annually, with the speed that some of these items are created, they may want to make it a semi-annual event.
