Unfortune Poor celebs…when will they learn?

Crunchies: Here’s The Winners’ Award

Last night we gave an overview of our thought process for coming up with the award that will be given to each category winner for the Crunchies event on Friday night in San Francisco.

The award itself, created by Clockwork Apple, is 14 inches tall and created in a very hard, very heavy cast plastic. The inspiration comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie a tribe of prehistoric ape-men interact with a black monolith that appears near them. The monolith inspires one of them to create the first use of technology - a bone used as a tool and a weapon. The video clip of the segment is in our original post on the award.

We are honoring startups that have innovated in technology; thus, we feel the award is symbolic culturally and appropriate. The additional flourishes, such as the baseball cap and jersey, were the idea of the artist to modernize the setting. And the ape is beating on old technology with his bone - a symbol of the disruptive nature of the technology world, where young startups often feast on their older, slower siblings.

One of these awards will be given to the winner of each of the twenty categories for the Crunchies (21 categories actually, we have an additional surprise award). The winners’ logos will be added to the award.

Very last tickets just became available

We are down to the last few available seats for the awards. We held a few hundred in reserve for sponsors, nominees and press. The ones not taken (about 60) have been put into the general queue and can be purchased here. The event starts at 7:30 and should end by 9. We’ll then have a party until about midnight. Everything is taking place at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Voting On Crunchies Ends at Midnight Tonight

Reader voting on the Crunchies awards ends at midnight tonight PST, about an hour and a half from now. We’ve had over 100,000 votes, but some of the races are very, very close.

The winners will be announced next week at the Crunchies event. The first two batches of tickets sold out right away. The third set goes on sale tomorrow at 11 am PST. This might be the last group of tickets for sale, depending on how many of the reserve tickets are taken by press and nominated startups.

More information on the event is here.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

First Release Of Crunchies Tickets Sold Out. More Next Week

The first set of tickets for the Crunchies, which went on sale last night, sold out this morning. We will put another batch up for sale on Tuesday next week at around 10 AM PST.

If you are a nominated company, you get two tickets alloted to you, and we’ve reserved more for purchase if you want to bring more of the team. We are contacting all of you separately with information.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Tickets to the Crunchies Available Now. Come See Richter Scales Live

Tickets for the Crunchies startup awards ceremony and party, which will be held on January 18 in San Francisco, are available now for purchase. The event will be held at the Herbst Theatre at 7:30 p.m. and will be followed by a party. This event is being produced by Read/WriteWeb, Venture Beat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

We’ve got a number of surprises that we’ll be announcing over the next couple of weeks. The first - in addition to the startup awards, Richter Scales will be singing their famous (infamous?) Here Comes Another Bubble song live at the event.

Over 45,000 votes have been cast for 100 startups in 20 award categories. Who’ll win? That will be a closely held secret until the night of the event. Voting goes through midnight pst, January 10.

Details:

• Friday, January 18, 2008 at 7:30 pm
• Herbst Theater, San Francisco
• Festive attire welcome. After-party to follow.
• Tickets are available here, hosted courtesy of amiando.

The Herbst Theater has 916 seats, so we have just 450 general admission tickets in the balcony and dress circle to release for the event. Tickets are $40, and $10 from each ticket will be contributed to the American Heart Association in honor of Om Malik and in memory of Marc Orchant. The balance of the tickets are reserved for the 100 finalist companies, press and corporate sponsors. If you are interested in orchestra seats as an event sponsor, please contact Jeannie Logozzo. Sponsorship packages range from entry-level event tickets to sponsorship of specific award categories, and all creative combinations in between.

Thank you to the sponsors of the 207 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including amiando our official ticketing sponsor, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Highlights for Tonight’s TechCrunch MeetUp in Boston

So tonight’s the big night for our first MeetUp in Boston, with co-host IDG Ventures Boston. Doors open at The Estate, 1 Bolyston Place at 6 pm. Party ends at 11 pm (see info below about the drinking-focused after party). Please bring your IDs for ticket verification.

Here are a few highlights of what to expect:
We are working with Brightcove to host a variety of video interviews with meetup attendees. We will be featuring a series of interviews with technology founders/CEOs and Erick Schonfeld. Thanks to Chris Brogan for producing the video segments. We’ll be adding the video posts using the Brightcove player on the dedicated Boston MeetUp page.

SnapYap will be live videoblogging the meetup. They will also be opening up invitations to their new Video Calling feature for the first 1,000 users that sign up through this link. Try it out!

Attendees will also be enjoying an array of interactive games and contests with cash and prize giveaways: ZoomInfo is raffling off a Nintendo Wii, Moola is giving away $5,000 cash to the winner of an online game and Poker Creations is hosting an interactive poker tournament with cool prizes all night long.

After Hours with TechCrunch: We’ve also decided to continue our social networking at a nearby pub when we’re done at The Estate at 11 pm. Please join us at MJ O’Connor’s, 27 Columbus Avenue at Park Plaza. We’ll keep a tab open until the TechCrunch credit card gives out. Drink your Red Bull today so you can stay up with us!

Thank You Sponsors
We’re incredibly grateful to our nineteen event sponsors who are making tonight’s Boston MeetUp possible.

Please take a few minutes to learn about the services of our hosts on our dedicated Boston MeetUp page and here.

Event Co-Host:
IDG Ventures Boston: early-stage venture capital firm with $280 million under management. The firm is focused on investing in consumer, information and life sciences technology companies. IDGVB portfolio companies that will be represented at TechCrunch MeetUp Boston include Acinion, BzzAgent, go2 Media, GuildCafe, Infobright, Mall Networks, MOBIVOX, SimpleTuition, Transpera and VidSys.

Partner and Product Launch Sponsors:

Brightcove: the market-leading Internet TV platform, used by media businesses around the world to distribute and monetize direct-to-consumer, broadband video programming.

Moola: has created a “Massively Multi-player Rewards Game” (MMRG) that is half loyalty program and half super-jackpot game show with 175,000+ member community.

Mzinga: provides workplace and customer community solutions that transform business processes to produce a more energized workforce, greater customer loyalty, and positive bottom line impact.

OurStage: is the only purely democratic online competition where the fans decide who’s the best in emerging music, film and video.

TripAdvisor: is used 25 million people each month to start their travel plans and who are pioneering the next generation of online travel guides.

ZoomInfo: a business information search engine used to quickly find information about 3.5 million companies and 40 million business people.

Communications Sponsor
PerkettPR, Inc.: provides results-based communications solutions for emerging Web 2.0 companies and established technology leaders.

Product Sponsors
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment: is intelligently connecting gamers on a massive scale with its innovative Social Networks at Playâ„¢ (SNAP) games.

CoreBlox: is all about enabling people to easily locate and exchange information.

NowHound: is the Internet’s first live-media search, and is launching out of stealth mode tonight during the TechCrunch Boston Meetup.

Power Play Development Corporation is the parent company of Poker Creations, a gaming software development company and National League of Poker, the Internet’s leading poker-centric social media portal.

MyPunchbowl: is a new website for event and party planning with unique features such as: “Pick a Date”, “Save the Date”, “Party Checklist” and more.

SnapYap: is an exciting new suite of live video communications tools, the first of which is launching during the TechCrunch Boston Meetup.

Event Sponsors
Prism VentureWorks: is a Westwood, MA and Santa Monica, CA based venture capital firm built by experienced entrepreneurs in technology and life sciences with approximately $1.25 billion in capital under management across five funds.

You Be the VC: equal parts incubator and American Idol, is a competition to find the best new entrepreneurs in the U.S.

We’d like to also thank Memo Media for making us and our sponsors shine in the digital signage displayed at the meetup; Gary Vaynerchuk at Wine Library TV for supplying our delicious wine for the evening; and EventBrite for seamless ticket managment for MeetUp attendees.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.