Got Blot? 7th Annual Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards Now Online.

Bigger, better, blottier. Our own Warner Crocker has thrown out all boundaries of breadth and length in this year’s Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards, his annual look back on the “achievements” of the year in tech, web, and culture.

As with every year, Warner kicks things off with his overview of the year followed by the individual awards, nicknamed (by me) the Blotties, giving the big stories in mobile tech all the reverence they’re due. “Best” awards dominate the list, but the categories aren’t always something one wants to be “best” at…

Best We Screwed Up With MobileMe, We’re Trying Again with iCloud, But We Still Haven’t Figured Out How to Use the Cloud Yet: Apple

Best We Waited, We Saw, We Retreated, We Retrenched, and We Hoped 2011 Would Be Better for Us. It Wasn’t and Now We’re Moving on to Ultrabooks Until a New Trend Comes Along We Can Follow: All other Tablet/Slate Manufacturers in the Wake of the iPad

Best Proof Two Heads May Not Be Better than One: RIM

Other categories are more positive, though all are admittedly completely subjective and named at Warner’s whim…

Best Platform Agnostic Software: Tie-Evernote and Dropbox

Best Inking App for iPad: Penultimate

Best Interim Blogging Strategy in between URLs: This Is My Next…

Most telling are some important categories of years past that have gone unfilled this year…

Most Innovative Tablet PC of 2011: No Award Given

Best Tablet PC Software of 2011: No Award Given

These are comparative awards so really, any Tablet PC released this year, such as the Motion CL900 or Fujitsu Stylistic Q550, which both fall under the classic Windows-based Tablet PC category, could have been considered most innovative, but I have to say, this year has been like comparing which vanilla ice cream is the most vanilla. One might be sweeter, another smoother, but I wouldn’t say any one solidly stood out from the rest. Most of the inquiries I’ve fielded regarding Tablet PCs have been about business-class convertibles, and this year’s new ones are primarily updates from previous year models. Hopefully this will turn around when the Windows 8 train pushes new Tablet PCs next year.

Closing out the list are his picks on culture & politics, repeats, local stuff and retirees, including a new one for James Kendrick, who I nominate next year for most consistent Ink Blot award retiree. Another solid list of the year’s hits and misses from Warner. If you aren’t easily insulted by cynicism/realism, go check it out.