The finalists of this year’s crunchies have been announced. Over 110 thousand internauts voted in 20 categories.

I’ve taken a quick peek at the list and the first impression is that a) it is questionable whether companies like Digg or Facebook should be considered - they’ve been on the market for a long time and are already widely recognizable, b) there are obviously lots of innovative concepts, e.g.:

23andMe
Service that will read & interpret your DNA. All that’s required is sending them a saliva sample and… covering the cost of research. Seems like a bargain: $999 + shipping. Company was funded by Google a while ago with Sergey Brin’s wife being involved since its inception.

WeatherBill
Their tag line says it all: “Get Paid for Bad Weather”. Innovative risk management service allowing to purchase customized contracts to protect businesses against weather changes. Hopefully, they’ll soon expand their offering and allow for online weather change orders.

Attributor
Service that will crawl the web to check whether your copyrighted content might be used by somebody else without permission. Less innovative, but practical!

For all Palm OS enthusiasts there is no good news. The company that used to lead the world’s handheld and smartphone markets still cannot find its way of out the trouble. In April 2006, Palm’s CEO officially announced that they would deliver new Linux-based OS platform along with new products by the end of that same year. Almost two more years have gone by and the only news, hardly positive, is that the OS just got the code name..

The earliest estimates for when the new smartphones would ship are, according to Palm Infocenter, February 2009.

It will be interesting to see whether iPhone or other Windows Mobile based devices manage attract those hundreds of thousands, still loyal, Palm OS-based Treo users and make them abandon the outdated platform.

The problems are obviously not only related to the software side. On the outside, the chunky Treos have barely changed over the years. Palm needs new designs, up-to-date hardware modules as well as services that will suit the needs of the business smartphone user’s needs.