NDTV TechLife Awards 2010 — Curtain Raiser

Last year, NDTV shook the gadget industry by announcing an

awards event that was aimed at not Bollywood or any other form of human skill.

The 'TechLife' awards showcased and awarded gadgets and gizmos that turned out

to be 2008's most impactful launches. After the success of TechLife Awards in

2009, NDTV is back with TechLife Awards 2010. Dubbed as the Oscar of Gadgets,

the awards showcase the best of gadgets launched through the year.

Along with the announcement of the second edition of the

awards, NDTV has entered into an alliance with Cyber Media (India), whereby

Living Digital are the knowledge partners for the 2010 TechLife Awards. With a

dedicated testing lab and a team of experienced Technology Analysts, CyberMedia

proves to be the perfect entity to tie-up for product evaluation. Furthermore,

Ernest & Young has been roped in as the governing auditing body that would

overview the entire process of benchmarking, short listing and selections.

The process of sourcing, selecting, evaluating and short

listing products is already underway with more than 200 gadgets across

categories being tested. Various teams across organizations are working round

the clock to finish the work for the grand finale taking place in the last week

of March.

This year NDTV has increased the nomination categories from

last year's 11 to a good 16 categories. Also, in an attempt to make the awards

more end-consumer focussed, professional grade devices have been excluded from

all categories.

	Best Computing Device — This category includes all personal computing devices, including netbooks, net-tops, laptop computers, desktops and all-in-one computing devices.
	Best Gaming Product — The best gaming product category covers all forms of gaming hardware and software. Gaming hardware includes all gaming consoles, graphics cards, gaming-specific laptops/desktops and handheld gaming devices. Hardware would also include gaming accessories like gaming keyboards, mice, high performance mouse pads, gaming headsets and speakers. Gaming software includes all game titles, across all platforms (including mobile phone games for all platforms like iPhone, Symbian, Windows, Android)
	Best Smartphone - Quite simply, this award goes to the best overall Smartphone. A Smartphone would be defined as one offering various advanced capabilities in terms of day-to-day use, connectivity as well as third party software installations and running a Smartphone operating system such as Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android etc.
	Best Budget Mobile Phone - This award is for the best budget mobile phone (Smartphone or feature phone) under the price range of Rs 12,000.
	Best Imaging Device - Imaging devices includes all types of digital still cameras and video cameras. These include those that record to tape, flash memory or hard disks.
	Best Television Display — The Best Television display category covers all types of flat panel televisions like LCDs, LEDs, plasma TVs, projection TVs (not projectors) and laser TVs.
	Best Portable Audio Product — This includes all portable MP3 and MP4 (video players), portable sound docks and battery powered speaker systems as well as any other form of portable device that works with audio.
	Best Audio System — This one Includes sound systems such as home theatre systems, sound bars, high-end speaker-amplifier combinations, vacuum tube amplifiers and speaker packages.
	Gadget Eye candy - This is the gadget that you feel offers the most visual appeal & design flair in your category. There is no price or specification limit, its all about the looks here.
	Best Celebrity Endorsement — This category basically looks at various celebrity endorsements for gadgets. TV commercials, print ads, etc. are considered for this award.
	Best Consumer Electronics Device - This category includes projectors and projection systems, DVD players, Blu-Ray players, HDD media players, HD video upscalers or any other gadget or consumer electronic product which is not covered in any of the other categories.
	Green Gadget of the Year - Green has been the focus of the industry through the last year, hence this is the gadget that is unquestionably green; in design, workmanship, material and performance.
	Best Mobile Application — This one covers mobile applications across all mobile platforms (Symbian, iPhone, Windows, Android, Palm, etc.). The category Includes all manners of apps like games, productivity, GPS maps and even fun apps.
	Best Computer Peripheral - Computer peripherals include printers (both inkjet and laser), all-in-one (print-scan-copy-fax) devices, scanners (sheet-fed and flatbed), external storage devices, webcams, keyboards and mice. Basically anything that can be worked with after being plugged into a computer.
	NDTV Gadget of the Year (Popular Category) — This category is not open to nominations. This award will be populated from amongst the other entries jointly by the LD and NDTV edit teams. The final winner will be decided using a public voting on the NDTV TechLife Awards website.
	NDTV Gadget of the Year (Popular Category) — This category is not open to nominations. This award will be populated from amongst the other entries jointly by the LD and NDTV edit teams. The final winner will be decided using a public voting on the NDTV TechLife Awards website.

What is important to note is that to be a part of the award

nominations, a couple of basic criteria required to be filled by the nominator

for their entries. The first one is that the Device should have been launched

between 1st Jan 2009 to 31st Jan 2010. Secondly, the nominated products should

be available in India. And lastly, the product should be consumer focussed and

not from the professional category.

With the awards ceremony just a couple of weeks away, keep

a lookout for news trickling down NDTV's website at www.ndtv.com as well as

Living Digital's Website for up-to-date news, reviews and happenings at

www.ld2.in.