We had high hopes that we might get some press coverage for our awards, but never thought for moment we’d make both the Daily Mirror and The Sun. Ok, so The Sun only gave a us sentence in the main paper, but they more than made up for it with a fantastic piece on Britain’s chaviest gadget on the web. Sadly it isn't up there any more so you'll have to take our word for it. You can however see it reproduced here. It has been quite a week.
It has been another great week for Shoewawa with page impressions shooting up all the time and some very positive coverage. According to The Guardian the site is must for Carrie Bradshaw the next time her elegant fingers alight upon her Apple Powerbook. We were also delighted to get a wink of approval from quite possibly the coolest man in the whole blogosphere, Josh Rubin.
You've had the Oscars, the Brits and the Baftas. Now meet the Telewest Broadband Shinies - the first ever alternative technology awards presented by Shiny Media websites Tech Digest, Shiny Shiny and Games Digest.
From the most bling gadget to the Chav-iest gizmo, the awards which were agonised over by a team of the UK's top technology journalists who write for newspapers like The Sun, Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent and the Mail On Sunday.
Highlights of the evening's winners include:
Tech Digest's Must-Chav Gadget. Winner: Oakley Thump MP3 Sunglasses The perfect companion for your Burberry cap, the Oakley Thump Shades feature a built-in MP3 player. They sound great too - if you can work out where the on button is.
Shiny Shiny Award for Shameless Pinkness. Winner: Girls Stuff Pink Fondue Set You've got to admire a company that seeks to get the female vote by slapping a bit of pink paint on its gadgets. The Pink Fondue set from Girls Stuff was entirely shameless in its deployment of pinkness.
Tech Digest Award for the most random place to house an MP3 Player. Winner: Oregon Scientific MP120 These days, whatever random object you can think of, someone will have stuck an MP3 player in it. With toy cats, sunglasses and watches in the running, it was a stiff contest, but Oregon Scientific's underwater, waterproof player finally claimed the prize.
Shiny Shiny Award for Bling. Winner: Siemens SL65 Escada The girls over at Shiny Shiny love a bit of tackiness to brighten up their day. That's why, with its strings of freshwater pearls, its zirconia stones, and, most importantly, its Swarovski crystals, the Siemens SL65 Escada was the clear winner.
Tech Digest Gadget of the Year Award: Sky+ 160 The best digital video recorder got a whole lot better this year. Still the ultimate box to have under your TV.
Shiny Shiny Icon Award: Motorola RAZR V3 The Shiny girls reckon the year's most influential design is Motorola's supermodel skinny mobile phone. Expect a load of copy cats next year.
Full list of Tech Digest award winners is here and Shiny Shiny here
Shiny Media's websites
Greatly respected within the UK consumer electronics industry Tech Digest (www.tech-digest.com) has been running for a year and half and currently receives over 400,000 page impressions per month. Launched in April 2004 its sister title (in every way possible) Shiny Shiny (www.shinyshiny.tv) takes a female oriented look at gadgets and consumer electronics. It boast 200,00 page impressions per month. Both sites have been widely written about on both sides of The Atlantic with positive reviews in USA Today, International Herald Tribune, The Sun, Daily Mirror, The Guardian, Time Out and many other publications and websites. Shiny Media also publishes Games Digest (www.games-digest.com), a geek-free view of computer games industry, Shoewawa (www.shoewawa.com), a wry and incisive take on, err, women's shoes and Digital Jukebox and Mobile Digest. Shiny Media plans to launch six new blogs before March 2005
Shiny Media's crew
Helmed by Ashley Norris, Chris Price and Katie Lee London-based Shiny Media is the UK's largest and most successful nano-publisher. The company produces high quality websites written by supremely talented writers that cover niche areas. Its flagship site Tech Digest currently boasts page impressions of around 400,000 per month. More info from www.shinymedia.com
With the end of The Green Wing and Little Britain the Shiny Media crew has found itself with a little more time on its hands than normal. So we have given way to our natural urges and have been tinkering with our websites.
So if you shuffle over to Shiny Shiny you'll see not only a revamped design complete with a shocking pink backdrop, but also a new logo courtesy of London's best new design agency 300 million.
Shoewawa, our fab new shoe blog, got its first celebrity endorsement today. Well sort of for Carol Vorderman personally singled it out as the 'website of the day' in her techy section in The Daily Mirror.
Carol said 'Shoewawa is fun and sassy with essential info on High Street copies of the latest designer numbers, celeb gazing plus every Friday is eBay watch for bargains.'
We love Carol and we think her bit of the Daily Mirror is the best section of the whole paper.
Shoewawa also got the thumbs up this week from those doyens of the Digerati at New Media Age.