It's time again to honor those companies whose high-tech hijinks have made for continual blog fodder over the past year. As with last year, this year's *Moonies (for Malicious Obnoxious Offensive or Nonsensical behavior) come with a handsome statuette of Steve Ballmer dropping trou in the general direction of the Googleplex. Also noted: a few companies that get a tip of the Cringe fedora for a job well done. So It’s time again to honor those companies whose high-tech hijinks have made for continual blog fodder over the past year. As with last year, this year’s *Moonies (for Malicious Obnoxious Offensive or Nonsensical behavior) come with a handsome statuette of Steve Ballmer dropping trou in the general direction of the Googleplex. Also noted: a few companies that get a tip of the Cringe fedora for a job well done.So without further preamble: The Sweet Turd of Youth award goes to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 20-something CEO. Z-Berg had no qualms about sharing his subscriber’s Amazon’s purchases via the ill-thought-out Beacon ad service, but howled like a Banshee when his own privacy was violated. Facebook sued Cambridge-based magazine 02138 after it published Zuckerberg’s college diary, Harvard application, and other embarrassing documents. The docs are part of the public record, courtesy of a suit in which Zuckerberg is accused of stealing key concepts of Facebook from ConnectU, another social networking site with whom Zuckerberg was briefly employed. My favorite diary entry (PDF): “The Kirkland facebook is open on my computer desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.” Nice. On the other hand: Maybe this will convince Facebook to bring in adult supervision, the way Larry and Sergey brought in Eric Schmidt. Or at the very least someone to bring them a snack and a blankie at naptime.We’d tell you, but then we’d have to kill you award goes to Apple Inc. Two years ago, Apple sued Think Secret, an Apple-centric news blog written by Harvard student Nick Ciarelli (a.k.a. Nick dePlume), in an attempt to strong-arm Ciarelli into revealing the names of his sources. In a settlement reached last week, Apple agreed to drop its suit against Think Secret, provided Think Secret agreed to drop dead. Both parties are calling it a “positive solution,” but I suspect that’s more from lawyer fatigue than anything else. Sure, Apple’s products are great (well, unless you include the AppleTV), but its tactics are chilling. “Think Different,” my a**. It’s the same old corporate control in spiffy white-on-white package.On the other hand: Maybe this will finally convince some rabid Mac fanboys to abandon their slavish devotion to St. Stephen of Cupertino. But I’m not betting on it. We know it’s a dead horse but we enjoy beating it anyway award goes to SCO, which has doggedly pursued a course of self-destruction since it first sued Novell and IBM over the rights to Unix roughly 97 years ago. (It seems like that long anyway.) Having lost the key battle over who owns the copyrights to Unix last August (that would be Novell), there’s little left to do but divvy up what’s left of a company whose sole purpose seemed to be spreading FUD throughout the Linux movement. SCO filed for financial bankruptcy in September; moral bankruptcy occurred some time prior.On the other hand: Lawyers gotta eat. The Vista we hardly missed ya award goes to Microsoft (duh). It wouldn’t be a Cringe awards column without flashing a great big moon in the general direction of Redmond. Nearly a year after Vista’s debut, people are still debating whether the new OS was a step forward for the company, two steps back, or possibly just some weird spasmodic attack that hopefully will pass. No matter, because we’re stuck with it. Though PC makers are selling XP systems longer than they (or Microsoft) thought they would, those of us who don’t migrate to Mac or leap to Linux will be using Vista eventually. On the other hand: Vista is better than Windows ME, so they got that going for them. (See, I can say something nice about Microsoft, if I really try.) Meanwhile, a tip of the virtual fedora goes to… Dell, for listening to its customers and releasing a Linux-based PC (now about those support options…). Google, for continually whacking entrenched monopolies upside the head (and if they win the auction for the 700MHz spectrum, things ought to get pretty interesting). Novell and IBM, who probably could have just paid SCO to go away but didn’t. HP, for not doing anything particularly egregious for the past 12 months (I’m sure they’ll recover in 2008). And to everyone who’s contributed to this blog by reading, emailing, and writing comments, and engaging in spirited debate. Let’s all do it again next year, shall we?* No association with the church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon is intended. But if you want to make your own jokes in that regard, feel free. Just don’t mention Apple and you probably won’t get sued. Who’s on your best/worst list for 2007? Nominate them below or email me here. Top tipsters will qualify for cool swag (which won’t make it there by Christmas, I’m sad to say.) Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business