U shld hav red tis befr teh pol http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/time-magazine-throws-up-its-hands-as-it-gets-pwned-by-4chan/

Hmm, hope that this again will not turn into another biased (rigged?) result. 'Cos from common knowledge there are some RIAs which ran for the poll who have close relation with adobe employees and InsideRIA authors.

Last week InsideRIA published its 50 Most Usable RIAs. http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/50-most-usable-rias.html

From initial 20 Best of RIA 2009 candidates only 3 actually make it to the 50 Most Usable RIAs. Since InsideRIA authors are the voters here, it is an easy guess as who the 3 in Best of RIA 2009 will be. Only the order need to decided.

You know, this kinda sucks. If you stopped the voting right after that Aviary blog entry that'd be ok as a timely reaction, but you let the people vote even after that and only when it was over you said that it will all be reset.
Besides, how about the votes that were legit? It appears they didn't matter at all.
I'm new to all this InsideRIA thing but after all of these cheating and resetting stuff I don't feel really good about InsideRIA in general. I like the idea of finding the best RIAs though...

I think that decision is the worst ever decision being made here. I doubt that InsideRia's authors will spend their time to evaluate and play with applications they don't know yet, so they will simply choose the ones they know.
In additions, it is strictly unfair to application fans and supporters - I believe InsideRia enjoyed a storm of FREE VISITORS to their site just for nothing.

That really sucks. If the decision will not be changed - I am stopping being your reader forever.

You must be kidding? Google for "insideria voting" and see how many backlinks you've generated by the participants and now you tell them you will choose by yourself inside your team?
I am not sure how many votes were cheated during the voting, but the most cheating is happening here by InsideRia itself.
I think most of participants should revoke their names from that shameful process.

That's terrible decision. If you have time till Wednesday, then reset the voting, integrate CAPTCHA into the script and then let people vote again.
Maybe there will be less people, but still it will be much better than saying what you've just said.

P.S. 2 nominees - sorry guys to see what they are doing with you.

Hey! What about the companies that are not well known? This poll was the great opportunity for many of them to present their product on Adobe Max. Not only the product but their vision and skills. They did their best to get these votes and shouldn't suffer from cheaters!

I think you should restart this poll, with all 20 of nominees at once, but using another script that is more powerful and can not be cheated. This is only solution.

I think this is a good decision.
Any other decision (restart poll, ...) would have also been criticized

Do you really think that authors will spend their time to evaluate 20 applications within 2 days. It is not a two hours task to complete.

As an author to this website, I don't really feel qualified to choose the best RIAs given that I haven't even tried 90% of these apps and only dabbled with some of the remaining 10%. Hopefully, the other authors have much more time to evaluate all of these than I do.

I think there was no good solution at this point and this, while imperfect, is an acceptable compromise. Rather than being angry at InsideRIA, how about being upset at the cheaters who attempted to scam the system and ruined it for everyone. Obviously, it should go without saying that it is a known issue and should be handled in advance of running any future polls.

Another interesting sidenote, maybe its just me, but most of these anonymous comments sound in tone and gammar distinctly like they were written by the same individual. I never trust anonymous commenters (if you can't put your name on it, maybe you shouldn't say it).

Hey everybody, relax. Happy Labour Day.
Here are he winners:
1. Aviary. (thank you guys for bringing the issue to public, many authors already know about you and you are in the list of 50 most usable RIAs).
2. Balsamiq Mockups (also in TOP 50 list).
3. Someone from the crown to make the whole process "fair".

Congrats to all winners and see you all at MAX.
(2 Brian Rinaldi - Yes I'm coming to show you not only my name but also my face :))

Steve, nothing was decided yet according to Rich's post.

"The 3 RIA's that receive the most points will be declared as the winners. All votes must be received by 6pm Eastern time on Wednesday 9/9 and the winners will be revealed on 9/9 at 9pm Eastern time."

But thanks for the vote of confidence regardless. :)

Regarding anonymous #1's comments:

"Hmm, hope that this again will not turn into another biased (rigged?) result. 'Cos from common knowledge there are some RIAs which ran for the poll who have close relation with adobe employees and InsideRIA authors."

If you meant SlideSix, yes, I am friends with some people at Adobe and friends with Ray Camden who is an InsideRIA author. But you're missing a few points here.

1. Adobe is not running or endorsing (that I know of) this competition. Adam Lehman endorsed SlideSix on Twitter because he likes the app (which was highlighted during the recent CFUnited conference BTW) and because it was the only ColdFusion app in the competition.
2. I'd be willing to bet most of the authors here do *not* know much about SlideSix and as much as I'd love to be picked I doubt I'll make it in to the top 3. There are some awesome apps in this list of 20. I was honored and happy just to be a part of it.

I've also talked to Ray and he plans on making a full disclosure that he is friends with me, but let's be fair here - he uses my site quite frequently to post his presentations. Certainly it's a decent app if he chooses to use it over the other options available to him.

I would simply reveal the name of the cheaters and cancel the poll because of their unfair behavior.

Mr. Tretola good job. Well done. I can only imagine how bad all nominees feel. They worked hard just for nothing. Bravo.

Just to clarify, Bill Scott and I picked the 50 Most Usable RIAs out of hundreds we had seen over the past four years, not from a formal entry process.

There are some really great designs in the initial 20 nominees that we had not reviewed at the time the article was drafted (for instance HotGloo is very well designed).

I hope we can continue in the spirit of the original contest- and keep striving to recognize, design, and code great RIAs. Good luck to all the nominees!