Readers' Choice Awards Voting Opens Today

The journey towards determining the best of online video technology continues, as today we open up voting for the 2013 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards. It's the only awards program in the industry where the winners are chosen by you, the people who actually use the products and services that we'll honor at Streaming Media West.

Click here for the voting form

The journey began in July, when we solicited nominations in each of our 26 categories. We received more than 475 nominations, and after we got rid of duplicates, we have a total of 253 nominees. If, as you go through the voting process, you find an instance where a product or service is missing from a given category, please contact us at readerschoice@poscoop.com, and we'll evaluate the request and make the addition if it's appropriate.

Voting is open until October 25. Last year, more than 58,000 people voted in the awards.

We'll announce the top 3 finalists in each category on November 1, and we'll reveal the winners at Streaming Media West in Huntington Beach CA on November 20. This year's Readers' Choice Awards are sponsored by Wowza Media Systems and Teradek.

Winners are also featured in the December/January issue of Streaming Media magazine, on StreamingMedia.com, and published in StreamingMedia Xtra newsletter.

Also at Streaming Media West, we'll be announcing the winner of the first Streaming Media Producer Challenge. We're offering a brand new Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital SLR Camera to the filmmaker who can deliver the most exciting, mind-blowing 15-second promo for the Streaming Media brand. The Streaming Media Producer Challenge is sponsored by Limelight Networks and Teradek.

So get to it! To refresh your memory, here are the categories for this year's Readers' Choice Awards:

Cellular Bonding Solution

Closed Captioning Solution

Cloud Encoding/Transcoding Service

Content Delivery Network

Desktop Video Editing Software

DRM/Access Control Solution

Education Video Platform

Encoding Software

Enterprise Video Platform

Field Encoder

Hardware Encoder (On-Demand)

Hardware Encoder (Live)

Live Video Platform

Media & Entertainment Video Platform

Media Server

MPEG-DASH Product

Multi-Language Solution

Portable Live Streaming Appliance

Reporting & Analytics Platform

Search & Discovery Platform

Transparent Video Caching Solution

Video Advertising Management Platform

Video Advertising Network

Video Switcher/Mixer

Webcasting/Presentation Solution (On-Prem)

Webcasting/Presentation Solution (Cloud)