Our friends over at tech blog Engadget have assembled the votes and put together the nominations for the 2009 Engadget Awards, and Palm is recognized in every category (five!) in which it ought compete. There’s some tough competition out there, but you know that we think that the Palm Pre and webOS indeed are the gadgets of the year. Despite the fierceness of the competition, the Pre and (surprisingly) Touchstone are holding their own in the polls. While we have no doubt that Palm is the tops, the only opinion that counts here is the mass opinion: your vote.

What’s Palm up against?

See? Tough competition there. As you can imagine, if the Pre and Touchstone are to stand any chance of remaining in the fight, they’re going to need your vote. Voting is open until February 20, 2010.

May the best gadgets win!

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Over at jkOnTheRun, James Kendrick has posted up results comparing the Mobile Hotspot feature on his Palm Pre Plus to the MiFi Mobile Hotspot device. His results are pretty disheartening: speeds on the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are noticeably slower than on the dedicated MiFi hotspot. I don’t have a Verizon MiFi to test against, but I have gotten faster download speeds than James did, however my upload speeds are lackluster to say the least. At right, the results of both of our tests, averaged over multiple attempts at Speakeasy (2 for James, 3 for me).

Update: I just realized that I had the "Unthrottle Download Manager" patch installed. I just removed that and ran another battery of tests and am getting slightly slower speeds, but not enough for me to think that this patch affects data speed – 3G is often wildly different from test to test, even from the exact same location.

After the break we’ve posted two polls that we’re asking only Verizon users to fill out: if you’re using Mobile Hotspot, what kind of data download and upload speeds are you getting? People using Mobile Hotspot on Sprint via ‘nefarious’ methods and people using other methods of tethering webOS, please sit this poll out and instead post your results in the comments.

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You’ve gotta love daytime talk shows, eh? Today’s taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show brought back the 12 Days of Giveaways, a segment where DeGeneres gives away stuff to the audience leading up to the Christmas holiday. She kicked off the series with an electronics bang, giving everybody in the audience a Barnes & Noble Nook eReader, a Powermat wireless charger, a MiFi portable wireless router, a Nokia Booklet netbook with two months of AT&T service, and our favorite, a Palm Pixi. Approximate retail value: $1450. Of course, you couldn’t really hear her describe the gadgets over her screaming audience. Yeah, they were a little bit on the excited side of life. Video is above, earplugs are encouraged.

Ellen’s not the only one giving away Palm phones. Palm is too – via their monthly Facebook giveaway. This month Palm is asking for you to comment on who on your holiday shopping list deserves a Palm phone, and it’s okay to enter yourself as the lucky gift recipient. Palm, however, is giving you an option: Pre or Pixi?

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