This year’s tree: sorted! (And with a new 12 inch decoration-free zone to deter snatchy boy hands.)

Last week I had lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Grill restaurant on Grosvenor Square. Joined by a number of tech journalists, all of us being fed courtesy of the lovely folk at Verbatim, I was lucky enough to be seated round the Butcher’s Block, a 12-seater table where you’re positioned next to the kitchen, and feast on a selection of tapas and different cuts of steak (the Wagyū was the best of a mouth-watering selection).

As well as enjoying some amazing food, you also get the opportunity to cook in Ramsay’s kitchen, and – despite the great food (did I mention how good it was?) – the chance to get into a pro kitchen was the real highlight for me. I managed to bark out a few orders, flip some steaks, and talk meat with a heavily-scarred chef (working over two flaming grills is clearly a dangerous endeavour). All-in-all, an amazing day!

Check out a video overview of the 2010 .net Awards (courtesy of the cute little critters over at www.ubelly.com).

Last Thursday – November 18th – London’s Ministry of Sound played host to the 2010 .net Awards. It was a fantastic night, where we celebrated the great and good of web design and development.

Happy Cog walked away with the Design Agency of the Year Award – which was much deserved – and above (left to right) you can see myself, HC founder Jeffrey Zeldman, president of HC East Greg Hoy, and president of HC West Greg Storey.

This year we spent particular time improving the way the Awards work, which culminated in a four stage process:

1. We asked for nominations from the general public.
2. Using this info, and that of a selected panel, we created shortlists.
3. The public voted (selecting three finalists in each category).
4. The final decision was made by 100+ industry judges.

Despite our push for transparency, though, this year’s event seemed to draw particular criticism, centred around the very existence of awards, and I’ve been asked to provide my take on the whole situation by quite a few friends, colleagues, and followers. Here it is: awards, when run in the best possible way and with the best possible intentions, are a positive and important component of any industry. Awards will always be present, and – if that’s the case – I’d rather it was an organisation such as .net magazine trying to do it the right way.

Our particular Awards drew most criticism over the fact that judges could appear as nominees, but wherever there was a conflict of interest, we asked that judges did not vote in this category, and discarded votes if they did. Next up, we had people question in which category some sites/people/services appeared, but if the categories in which they were originally nominated were relevant, we saw no reason to move them. Lastly, the incongruous nature of the Personality of the Year gong was highlighted – in hindsight, rightly so – and we’ve already taken the decision to remove it from 2011’s event.

And, well, that’s all I’m going to say. I already believe that too much attention has been deflected away from the night’s winners. I’d like to congratulate all those shortlisted in the 2010 Awards, especially the winners (see below), and thank everyone who took the time to attend. Here’s to a great 2011!

WINNERS:

Podcast of the year: Sitepoint podcast

Video podcast of the year:The Big Web Show

Viral campaign of the year: Old Spice

Web personality of the year: Jason Santa Maria

Blog of the year: Smashing Magazine

Community site of the year: Ravelry

Innovation of the year: node.js

Best API use: Flipboard

Mobile app of the year: Dropbox

Standards champion: Jeffrey Zeldman

Web app of the year: TypeKit

Interactive site of the year: Google Chrome Fastball

Mobile site of the year: Flickr

Open source application of the year: Modernizr

Redesign of the year: BBC News

Design Agency of the year: Happy Cog

As the 2010 .net Awards approach, I’ve been recalling last year’s event. My highlight of 2009 was – without question – meeting Stephen Fry, and presenting him with an Award, which we thankfully caught on video.

I love Easter eggs

Because there can never be too many kitten pics on the interwebs

Having recently watched The Social Network – the story of how Facebook was founded in extremely controversial circumstances – I have to say that the site’s creator Mark Zuckerberg comes across as a complete dick (a point that’s illustrated quite literally during a scene in the movie).

I’ve never met Mark Zuckerberg, and probably never will, but David Fincher’s artful Facebook movie is likely to play a large part in how people will now form their opinion of the site’s creator. If the movie was wholly factual, then there could be no complaints about this, but – as has been widely reported – this isn’t the case. Fincher had masterfully interwoven fact, taken from publicly available depositions, and fiction, straight from the pen of Aaron Sorkin.

As a piece of entertainment The Social Network is compelling, but as a factual depiction there are huge flaws. Some of the movie’s major events never happened, some of the movie’s characters never existed, and some would say Mark Zuckerberg would be justified in taking the film’s producers to task – and possibly court.

In the US, a defamation case is notoriously hard to pursue, but it’s a different story in the UK. In fact, some have argued that Zuckerberg would have a very strong case in the British system. Whether this would be a good course of action for Zuckerberg is another matter entirely, but – considering how much disdain I have for what he’s created – I do find myself feeling strangely sympathetic towards him.

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04portrayal.html?_r=1&hpw

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2010/10/04/the-social-network-fact-vs-fiction/

A pic of a few thousand servers, taken on a recent trip to 1&1’s HQ in Germany.