Last night the ceremony for the 2009 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards was held. The day before, CrunchPad was one of the 10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009. Except the CrunchPad doesn’t exist yet and there were no representatives at the awards ceremony.

In the first post by Michael Arrington that talks about the CrunchPad since announcing the launch prototype in June,  he strikes a similarity between him and Barack Obama. Both are capable of “winning of an award based on nothing but an incredible ability to manipulate the press,” Arrington says.

Popular Mechanics has listed the CrunchPad as one of the 10 most brilliant products of 2009. I guess they assumed it will be unveiled before the year end, which is very likely. This announcement will be also be in the print version of the magazine which has a circulation of 1.2 million. Surely Big M might need to adjust his marketing budget for the year. Another geeky product on the list worth mentioning is the Palm Pre.

From @parthabha.

Rumor has it that a CrunchPad announcement tonight maybe be brewing. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media which owns Gizmodo, said in a tweet that tonight at the Gizmodo Gallery there should be “Big gadget news. Not sneak peek of Apple Tablet. But next best thing.” Gizmodo Gallery is a NYC event started in late 2008 to basically showcase dozens of gadgets to the public. It starts today and runs until Sunday. Except here’s the cool thing which makes the announcement much more likely: today is “Media Day” and only invited individuals can attend. Gawker.com, a sister site, also says that will be “killed very badly” if they reveal anything about the product that’s supposed to be a “Bombshell”.

30 more minutes!

Update: It was the Microsoft Courier booklet. Not at the gallery, just a blog post by Gizmodo.

Today was the TechCrunch50 conference, an annual event that allows 50 technology start-ups to showcase their new products to 1500 attendees that included venture capitalists, corporate buyers, and credentialed press.

A few fans thought this would definitely be an ideal venue for a CrunchPad announcement from Michael Arrington. There’s been a significant amount of frustration around the interwebs against Big M because of broken promises. The first of which related to a press event that was supposed to be held in July. He told the San Francisco Business Times the same thing. That didn’t happen but we gave him some leeway when he told the New York Times that an announcement will be made in the beginning of August. Time passed as if there were no fans, and not even a peep had come out about the CrunchPad.

But lets be fair. Chandra Rathakrishnan, CEO of FusionGarage, spoke to the Straits Times on July 31 and said that the CrunchPad should be released this November. We will wait and shall name the month Black November if the CrunchPad is not released then.