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FEATURE
A Salute to the Winners
Introduction by Barbara Brynko; Profiles by Jamie Babbitt
As 2007 draws to a close, we’ve saved the best news for the last issue. This is the news you’ve been waiting for: We’re finally announcing the winners of the 2007 People’s Choice Awards.
The two-part voting process took place online at Information Today, Inc.’s Web site (www.infotoday.com). The voting was open to one and all. We started the voting process with one round of nominations, and then we tallied the top nominations in each category and created a final round for those contenders vying for first place. The final votes were counted; we had our winners.
For the winner in each category, we’ve included a profile of the company, person, or product, along with one or two comments from the voters themselves. We’ve also included honorable mentions for those contenders who received a substantial number of votes, just not enough to secure first place.
We have several companies from the first People’s Choice Awards in 2006 that have won again this year, and a few new players were introduced in the existing space with new products and services. The results—whether repeat winners from last year or new entries this year—are a testimony in their own right to the top quality produced by these companies and individuals; the industry users had a chance to give credit where credit is due.
Our 10 categories ran the gamut from Top Content Creation to Top Innovator, with plenty in between. Our one write-in category followed the social networking trend with user-generated sites and tools.
Congratulations to our winners. And thanks to those who took time to cast their votes for their favorites in the information technology industry. Stay tuned for information about the upcoming 2008 People’s Choice Awards. And now, turn to page 50 for the final results.
—Barbara Brynko |
| 2007 People’s Choice Awards |
TOP CONSULTING SERVICES
Winner: Really Strategies, Inc.
Company Basics: Privately held Really Strategies, Inc. has been providing publishers, media companies, and other companies with content solutions and services since June 2000. It now brings services from content creation to delivery to more than 60 publishing companies worldwide. Really Strategies’ staff members address the business and technical challenges that are faced in the publishing environment, such as project management, technology assessment, metadata and taxonomy planning, and RFP/RFI development. Really Strategies was a 2006 People’s Choice Awards winner in two categories: Top Consulting Service and Top Content Management (www.reallysi.com).
Comments: “Sharp group with clever solutions.”
Honorable Mentions: BearingPoint; HP Technology Solutions
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TOP ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS
Winner: Mark Logic Corp.
Company Basics: As the leading XML content server, Mark Logic Corp. helps information providers accelerate new product creation, deliver products through multiple channels, integrate content from different sources, build custom publishing systems, and more. The company’s XQuery has emerged as the standard for accessing collections of XML documents. Mark Logic was specifically designed to accommodate customers with large volumes of XML content, with a focus on four key areas including content, XQuery, speed, and scale. The company is a second-year winner in the category of Top Enterprise Applications (www.marklogic.com).
Comments: “Brings a fresh new look to an old problem; it just works.”
Honorable Mentions: Generate g2; QlikTech |
TOP NEW INNOVATOR (Individual)
Winner: Tim O’Reilly
Profile Basics: Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., which is considered by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. He is also an activist for open standards. Since he first published The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog in 1992, his vision has continued in his blog, the O’Reilly Radar, which he says “watches the alpha geeks” to find out about emerging technology trends, while serving as an advocacy platform about important issues for the technical community. O’Reilly previously won the 2006 People’s Choice Awards for Top New Innovator (www.oreilly.com).
Comments: “Tim’s the man.”
Honorable Mentions: Manolis Kelaidis; Tom Aley |
TOP CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Winner: RSuite CMS
Company Basics: Really Strategies’ RSuite CMS is an XML-based content management system designed specifically for publishers. It provides a full suite of editorial capabilities, including search, retrieval, and content updating; content reuse; and editorial workflow tools. It is built for non-IT users to easily set up and deploy, but Really Strategies also offers configuration, customization, and integration support for clients (www.rsuitecms.com).
Comments: “Great new piece of technology on a great XML database.”
Honorable Mention: University Reader |
TOP NEW SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOL (Other)
Winner: Facebook
Company Basics: Facebook is the digital take on those booklets given out the first day of freshman year as a who’s who on college campuses. It began as a social networking site for college students, opened itself to high schoolers, and is now accessible to anyone with an email address. Users join networks according to their location, school, or employer and connect with people who work, live, or study around them. It is designed to help users learn more about the people with whom they interact. Facebook recently opened its platform up to allow anyone to build applications, from Support Obama ’08 applications to daily love horoscopes (www.facebook.com).
Comments: “It’s not new, but it is good.”
Honorable Mentions: LinkedIn; goodreads.com |
TOP NEW IT ENTERPRISE
Winner: Ads-Click
Company Basics: Ads-Click, referred to by some as the “eBay of online advertising,” provides solutions for search and contextual advertising. Its technology serves more than 5 million page views each month, and it is giving publishers and advertisers more control over their advertising dollars. The Ads-Click platform provides full visibility into live bids for online ad space, so publishers and advertisers can determine fair prices for online advertising instead of going through a third party. Publishers have the freedom to offer other pricing models than the standard cost-per-click, such as cost-per-action, cost-per-view, and cost-per-thousand impressions (www.ads-click.com).
Comments: “Monetizing your site just got easier.”
Honorable Mentions: ITerating; Unisfair
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TOP NEW TECHNOLOGY
Winner: Newstex Blogs on Demand
Company Basics: According to Newstex, “sometimes simply knowing what’s going on isn’t enough.” If you’re one of those people who like to dig a bit deeper, Newstex may provide what you’re looking for. It customizes high-quality, affordable, real-time newsfeeds for customers from the world’s premier content publishers. Its Blogs on Demand product provides users with a selection of columns, op/ed pieces, and blogs accessible from one location. Users can browse topics, from accounting to video games, and select stories to view. Newstex won the Top New IT Enterprise in the 2006 People’s Choice Awards (www.newstex.com).
Comments: “The one blog aggregator that puts the useful blogs in one place.”
Honorable Mentions: Twitter; SimulScribe |
TOP CONTENT CREATION
Winner: Adobe Systems, Inc.
Company Basics: From the design of your daily newspaper to the ebook you’re reading on your laptop, you’ve likely had some experience with Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe creates technologies and software for business, entertainment, and personal communication. It pushes boundaries for digital communications to constantly engage customers, and it stays at the cutting edge of the industry. It provides solutions for the government, financial, education, manufacturing, telecommunications, life sciences, and publishing markets. Adobe offers products in publishing, mobile and devices, digital imaging, communication, technical communities, and more (www.adobe.com).
Comments: “High-quality content that fuels the system.”
Honorable Mentions: Content Nation; Scitopia.org |
TOP INFORMATION SERVICES
Winner: Answers.com
Company Basics: Answers.com is an ad-supported free site with a collection of more than 4 million answers from more than 180 titles from brand-name publishers plus original content from Answers.com’s editorial team. Its unique software, 1-Click Answers, lets users click on any word on the screen, in any program, for instant explanations—a one stop shop. Answers.com also has a mobile version, designed especially for PDAs, which can be accessed at http://mobile.answers.com. Answers.com won in the Top Information Services category in 2006 as well (www.answers.com).
Comments: “My go-to site for seeing everything in one spot.”
“Others may have interesting ideas, but these guys have executed and appear to be making it work.”
Honorable Mentions: Onvia (government); Revolutionhealth.com (healthcare); I•Metrix Professional (business) |
TOP SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOL
Winner: Digg, Inc.
Company Basics: Digg, Inc. calls itself a “place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.” Users drive the buzz that this social content Web site generates whether the story or information is from an article or a blog. But words aren’t the only thing Digg offers; there are podcasts, videos, and images too. Digg doesn’t have editors, but it does have a platform that is changing the way users consume information online today. If a story receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for Digg visitors. Digg, Inc. received honors in the Top New Technology category in 2006 (www.digg.com).
Comments: “Gives reading the news an all-new dimension.”
Honorable Mentions: Wikianswers.com; LibraryThing; Reddit.com; ITtoolbox.com |
TOP SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL
Winner: Google
Company Basics: If there’s one company that everyone in this industry—and everyone on this planet, probably—is familiar with, that company is Google. It has a mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google is recognized as the world’s largest search engine, and it is popular mainly because of its simple, easy-to-use interface and relevant results. The search service has expanded in the past few years with its email service Gmail, its maps service, its photo service Picasa, its blog service Blogger, and more. It also now offers specialized searches, such as Google Images, Google Video, Google News, and Google Scholar (www.google.com).
Comments: “Need I say more?”
“It works surprisingly well so much of the time.”
Honorable Mentions: Groxis; Ask.com; FAST Search & Transfer; Clusty.com |
Send your comments about this article to itletters@infotoday.com.
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