Awards

Can you remember the winner of TIME magazine's Most Influential Person poll in 2009? Was it Barack Obama? Oprah Winfrey? The Dalai Lama? No, it was Moot, the pseudonym of 21-year-old Christopher Poole, a college student and founder of online community 4chan.org. So, why the long winded introduction to this year's Cool Company Awards Readers' Choice Award? Did we get gamed?

The Cool Company Awards Readers’ Choice Index was created to provide an opportunity for Anthill readers to vote on Cool Company Award finalists, in one of three ways: Commenting, Like-ing and Tweeting. This way, readers not only direct attention to a worthy cool company but also introduce new people to these awards.

Gretha Oost has the heart of an environmentalist and the mind of a marketer. She pondered Australians' propensity to drink water from bottles when, by and large, water from their taps are perfectly safe. Her solution earned top honors in Anthill's SMART 100 for 2011.

Start with one person. Give them some light. Show them the way. That's what Barefoot Power is doing in developing communities in Africa and elsewhere. By replacing kerosene-fed lamps with its highly innovative and practical solar-powered LEDs, it provides the poor with access to electricity and one very necessary tool for economic development… light. For their tireless efforts toward raising up their fellow humans (while cleaning up the environment), Barefoot Power is king of the hill, top of the heap — the Coolest Company in Anthill’s 2010 Cool Company Awards!