Thus, when we submitted our entry a few months ago for the Stevie award in the “Most Innovative Company” category, we did so knowing that the competition would be even steeper this time around. And so we sent Doron off to the bright lights of NYC on Monday evening with properly tempered expectations. Until, that is, I received a text from our fearless leader at 9:22pm ET with a picture of him holding the Stevies hardware.

In short, tonight the American Business Awards named uTest 2011′s Most Innovative Company with <100 employees in the Computer Services, Electronics & Software category. It’s a major win and a true testament to what we’re building together — with our customers, our testers, our partners and our employees.

Now, before the orchestra music plays me off the stage, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the uber-innovators who were also finalists in this category:

• Appature from Seattle, WA
• Fulton Innovation from Ada, MI
• seoClarity from Des Plaines, IL
• Webs, Inc. from Silver Spring, MD

It’s a list of entrepreneurial companies who are disrupting their industries, and we were stoked to be included among such pioneers. Congrats to all the Stevies’ finalists and winners. You can find the complete list here. And congratulations to uTest Nation!

First, I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone in our community who has made the commitment to vote every day until November 29th. (Mashable allows you to vote once a day per category and the Top 5 per category will advance to the finalists round.)

Of course we don’t want you to vote just because we asked (although that’s okay too!), so here’s a quick snapshot of why uTest is the Most Promising New Company!

Since our launch, we have:

• Built a global community of 30,000+ professional testers in 168 countries worldwide
• Acquired hundreds of customers across multiple industries — from five-person startups to Fortune 500 co.s
• Raised a $13MM C round in funding last month (to total $20.5MM raised)
• Reported more than 75,000 software bugs, completed test cases and usability surveys
• Completed more than 1,500 testing projects
• Expanded functional testing offering, adding load testing & usability testing of web, desktop & mobile apps

So, what do you think? Does uTest get the honor of your vote? If so, simply CLICK on the image above, SIGN IN to Twitter or Facebook and click NOMINATE! And thank you for bearing with the quick uTest plug. We’d be thrilled to receive your vote!

Late last night in San Diego…after an extensive review of our track record and our CEO Doron Reuveni’s on-site presentation, uTest was selected as a winner of the 2010 Red Herring 100 North America Award. The list honors the year’s most promising private tech ventures from North America. The companies were selected based on their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition and financial health. Congrats to all other RH 100 winners, including our good friends at SOASTA!

This past Monday in Boston…uTest was also honored as an AlwaysOn East Top 100 winner, a list comprised of leading East Coast companies pioneering in cloud computing and SaaS technologies. uTest’s Matt Johnston was invited to present at the AlwaysOn East event (a.k.a. Venture Summit East) as part of a select group of top execs showcasing their technologies. Here’s the presentation below in case you missed it!

Thanks to all for following our adventures across the country this week!

The list includes top SaaS and Cloud companies that demonstrate leadership among peers, success in the marketplace and innovative tech. We are honored to be listed alongside industry pioneers, such as SOASTA, LiveOffice and Wordstream.

The winners were selected from among hundreds of tech companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders based on a set of five criteria:

– Innovation
– Market potential
– Commercialization
– Stakeholder value and
– Media buzz

CONGRATS to all the winners!

We’ll be attending and presenting at AlwaysOn’s OnDemand event on April 20^th @ HP’s Worldwide Headquarters in Palo Alto, where the Top 100 companies will also be honored. Check out how the program is shaping up!

If you happen to be in the area, shoot us a note!

If you know how popular Mashable is in social media circles, you know that this is a big deal.  We take a great deal of pride in using the uTest blog to bring you the latest news from the software industry, best practices on mobile app testing, uTest company info, and original content (from us and guest posts from some of  our top testers).  So sincere thanks and congratulations to the entire uTest universe… we couldn’t do any of this without our amazing customers, testers, investors and friends in the media.

And if you want to help us go for the gold, you can vote for uTest in the final round every day between now and December 12th!

The SNCR holds this event to recognize companies that are exploring new and innovative avenues of communications and marketing.  We were fortunate enough to be among those companies and agencies who were honored for our use of new media to build and engage our community.

It’s great to be counted among those who are pushing the limits of social networking, blogs, forums and other forms of media, but we’re just getting started.  We’ve already established a vibrant presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but we’re always on the lookout for new ideas.

So with that, I’m inviting you to drop us a comment or shoot us a note with your thoughts about how we could make our social media more useful, informative or entertaining.

So if you like the uTest blog, this is your chance to cast your vote and  support uTest and our community. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to http://mashable.com/owa/votes. (You must be signed into your Facebook or Twitter account.)
2. Then simply Nominate: http://blog.utest.com for Category: “Best Corporate Blog”
3. Voting is once per day, so please don’t be shy!

Thanks in advance for your help, and keep your fingers crossed for another big win for uTest and our community! Send us a note with any questions.

A big thank you to our partner Boston Interactive for helping us incorporate a more human face to uTest’s website and revamping it to reflect uTest’s community-centric business model.

As you know, we relaunched our website back in May 2009, and four months later, we’re already receiving high honors for it! Now in its 13th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best websites while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.

During this year’s competition, more than 2,000 sites from 45 countries were nominated in 96 industry categories. Entries were judged on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.

The new uTest website has enabled us to bring the real-world stories of our customers and testers to the forefront of the web experience to increase visibility into uTest’s global testing community of 19,000+ and enhance collaboration among software professionals worldwide. We’re honored to be among this year’s winners!

To see all 2009 award wins, check out uTest’s Awards Page!

Stemming from the bestselling book groundswell by Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, the Groundswell Awards recognize the year’s most innovative social platforms.

VOTE HERE!

With uTest’s recent website relaunch and the addition of community-centric apps (like “Meet the Testers”), discussion threads, forums, and social networking sites, we think we have a good shot, but we need your support.

See the full submission here for a quick refresher on our latest social technologies: http://www.utest.com/my-forrester-groundswell-award.

As you know, the social web has led to a dramatic increase in online platforms that create business value and enable social connections, including crowdsourcing models such as uTest.

uTest’s new website and online platform increase visibility, enhance collaboration and information sharing and highlight the human face of software testing with community-centric apps, including:

• “Meet TheTesters”
• Discussion Threads
• Community Forums
• Software Testing Blog
• Social Networking Sites

Since adding these new collaboration tools, the uTest software testing marketplace has grown 30% quarter-over-quarter; and the uTest community has increased to total more than 19,000 testers in 155 countries worldwide.

Thanks in advance to our tester community, customers and social networks for your support!

As previously mentioned, we were named to the AlwaysOn Global 250 list of emerging private companies.  Well, at last night’s ceremony, they officially recognized the list, and we were named the overall winner in the “SaaS and Enterprise” category.

This morning, Doron presented the uTest story during the CEO showcase.  The room was packed with startups, entrepreneurs, VCs and media.  Afterward, we conducted demos and discussed, among other things, crowdsourcing, software testing, mobile apps and overall startup life.

This afternoon, we had a series of great discussions with bloggers and journalists, including:

• Steve Bell (@sbell22) from Startup Trek (video interview & article available here)
• Mark Boslet from TechPulse 360 (@techpulse360)
• New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
  
• Svetlana Toun-Sambell, EDU Research Group

It’s always cool to see what other startups are up to.  It’s even cooler that so many of them approach us, and already know our name and story! If you’re in the Palo Alto area, and want to meet up, please shoot me a note.