We've reached the exciting part of the Crunchies, the awards celebrating the year's best achievements in technology -- the part where you get to choose the winners.
Readers already sent in tons of nominations, and a committee from the three co-hosting sites (that's TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat) narrowed those down to six finalists in each of the 18 categories. Check out the finalists below, then click here to vote. Please remember that these awards are for accomplishments in 2009, not for the entire lifetime of these companies (or founders). Everyone is eligible to vote once per day per award category until midnight Pacific time on Jan. 6.
The winners will be announced at a swanky ceremony in San Francisco's Herbst Theater on the evening of Friday, Jan. 8. The first batch of tickets goes on sale tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon Pacific. We'll be bringing the game room back to the after-party, so if you're interested in sponsoring tables, photo booths, giveaways, or similar items, email crunchies@techcrunch.com.
Oh, and thanks to our sponsors for making this happen: Microsoft BizSpark, Founders Fund, Ustream, Subvert&Profit, Lewis PR, Eventbrite, Design About Town, Kosmix, and Zannel.
Here are the finalists:
Best Internet ApplicationGroupon Animoto Yelp Posterous MOG All Access Dropbox
Best Social Network ApplicationBrizzly StockTwits Farmville DailyBooth SocialVibe Aardvark
Best Mobile ApplicationFoursquare Skies Of Glory Gowalla Tonchidot Kindle For iPhone Google Voice
Best Technology AchievementGoogle Wave Silverlight (Microsoft) Chrome OS (Google) PuSH Bing (Microsoft) Backblaze
Best DesignAnimoto Brizzly Chrome (Google) Facebook Mobile Threadsy Clicker
Best Bootstrapped (less than $150,000 raised)Wufoo Atebits (Tweetie) Wizehive Shoes of Prey Wildfire Interactive Tinychat
Best Enterprise AppChatter (Salesforce) Amazon Web Services Atlassian Google Docs/Office Azure (Microsoft) Yext
Best InternationalSpotify Amiando Jolicloud Vente-privee.com Playfish TweetDeck
Best Clean TechCalStar Products Locust Storage Tendril Sappphire Energy Sun Run Picarro
Best New GadgetBN Nook Motorola Droid Zune HD Sonos S2 Apple Magic Mouse Litl webbook
Best Time Sink ApplicationDailyBooth Zoosk Pandora Civilization Revolution (iPhone) I Am T-Pain Canabalt
Best VC FirmGreylock Sequoia Accel Union Square Ventures True Ventures Benchmark Charles River Ventures
Best AngelRon Conway (SV Angel) Y Combinator Betaworks Jeff Clavier (SoftTechVC) Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital) Yossi Vardi
Best Tech PRSpark OutCast Communications PerkettPR LaunchSquad Sutherland Gold Brew PR
Founder of the YearJack Dorsey (Square) Omar Hamoui (AdMob) Aaron Patzer (Mint) John Borthwick (Betaworks) Jeremy Stoppleman (Yelp) Elon Musk (Tesla)
CEO of the YearMark Pincus (Zynga) Josh Silverman (Skype) Neil Young (ngmoco) Marc Benioff (Salesforce) Richard Rosenblatt (Demand Media) Tony Hsieh (Zappos)
Best New StartUp or Product of 2009Foursquare Spotify Bing (Microsoft) Aardvark Hunch Milo
Best Overall StartUp or Product of 2009Facebook Twitter Zynga LinkedIn ngmoco Android (Google)