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Winners of Crunchies 2007 announced

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new media newsCrunchies 2007 is like the Oscars for the best startups, Internet and technology innovations. It is a joint effort of popular sites TechCrunch, GigaOM, Read/Write/Web and VentureBeat.

After tallying more than 100,000 votes, the following companies have emerged victorious in the following categories:

Best Overall: Facebook
Best Technology Innovation/Achievement: Earthmine
Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors
Best video startup: Hulu
Best user-generated content site: Digg
Best mobile start-up: Twitter
Best International startup: Netvibes
Best consumer startup: Meebo
Best enterprise startup: Zoho
Best design: SmugMug
Best new gadget/ device: Apple iPhone
Best business model: Zazzle
Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme
Best Startup Founder: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)
Best new startup: iMedix
Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)
Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon
Best time sink site: Kongregate

The Entrepreneur Challenge starts today

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The Entrepreneur Challenge, a collaborative competition to discover tomorrow’s best innovative ideas and startups, officially begins today. The endpoint of this contest is to connect online startups and investors easily.

Powered by spigit, the only platform that combines prediction markets, social networking, bulletin boards, a reputation system, and staffing capabilities, this contest invites online entrepreneurs to share their ideas, business plans, leadership teams, and network with investors worldwide.

entrepreneur challenge

“Spigit’s Entrepreneur Challenge is the first online platform competition that will truly give an insider’s view on the funding process. The capabilities of outsiders, insiders and experts to engage in discussion and push one company ahead of another is the true meaning of Web 2.0 technology at work,” said Adam Hirsch, Mashable Community & Marketing Director

This prestigious and life-changing contest is backed by major big companies like Keiretsu Forum Socal, Sun Microsystems, Southwest Airlines, Killer Startups, Lithespeed, LaunchSquad, and Mashable.

The top 6 startups will have access to many opportunities not commonly available to ordinary startups. Keiretsu will allow them to pitch their plans to the angel investment community, Sun to provide hardware, travel courtesy of Southwest, and strong online exposure from Mashable, a popular social networking news site.

New hip-hop startup Global Grind gets $4.5M funding

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What’s with the hip-hop industry these days, anyway?

Just recently, hip-hop network Loud.com got equity investment from Universal Music. Then MySpace and XM Radio launched a hip-hop talent search. Now here’s a new startup, Global Grind, that allows you to stay updated on what’s happening in the hip-hop world.

Said to work just like Netvibes, New York-based Global Grind allows users to collaborate feeds, widgets, photos, maps, music formats, and other hip-hop content in one platform. While it’s still in private beta, Global Grind was reported to have gotten $4.5 M in funding led by Accel Ventures. Global Grind’s design doesn’t look hip-hop-ish to me at all, in fact, it looks almost like other content aggregators out there.

With thousands of online projects and web startups sprouting for specific niches, it looks as if the hip-hop community has been getting a lot of positive attention lately. Here’s to hip-hoppers out there, yo.