The Flashies have been awarded! One winner in each of 15 categories, chosen by reader balloting among a half dozen candidates.
In the “Newsmaker of the Year” category, who was the winner?
- Was it Paul Allen, who “recovers from non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, sues some of the Internet’s biggest names for patent infringement, and pledges along with other billionaires to give the majority of his fortune to charity”?
- Was it Steve Ballmer, who “attempts to reverse the company’s mobile fortunes, build momentum in video games and shore up its core software franchises while funding the campaign against a state income tax and announcing plans to sell up to $2 billion in stock”?
- Was it Jeff Bezos, under whose leadership “Amazon.com posts a 44 percent increase in employment in one year, expands its Kindle business, acquires Woot.com and reaches a deal to buy Diapers.com, while coming under intense criticism for its handling of the discovery of a pedophile guidebook in the Kindle store”?
- Was it Andy Sack, who “cements his role as a chief instigator and motivator on the Seattle startup scene — leading initiatives including Founder’s Co-op, TechStars and RevenueLoan”?
- Was it Ben Huh, who “continues to expand the Cheezburger empire of comedy websites; takes on Meg Whitman and the Associated Press; makes a public attempt to acquire the Reddit social news service; and stirs controversy over startup wages”?
Nope! It was Shwetak Patel, “a 28-year-old assistant professor in the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering [who] sells home energy monitoring startup Zensi to Belkin and separately develops a novel method of using electrical wiring as a wireless antenna system, spawning another startup.”
See all the winners here. See Shwetak bathed in Disco Red here.