Solution providers count on new and innovative technology to keep ahead of their competitors and offer creative solutions for their customer's business problems.

And each year, we recognize the most important new products providing opportunities for solution provider at our Tech Innovator Awards. This year, the awards will be presented at XChange Tech Innovators in Las Vegas in November. (You'll find last year's Tech Innovator award winners in our slide show.)

Applications for the awards are open now. Products must have been launched in the last year and available through the channel now. The application is free and available at http://www.crn.com/tiform. The deadline is July 24, so don't delay!

Tech Innovators is just one of many awards and directories offered by Everything Channel throughout the year. Keep an eye on ChannelWeb Directories and Awards 2009 for additional opportunities.

Each month, find out how well you know the channel, with our (almost) monthly quiz. It's a fun way to see if you've been keeping up with the technology and business issues affecting solution providers. And past months' quizzes hold up pretty well, if I do say so. Check them all out:

September 2009: M&A's by the $billion; Linux's bloaty kernel; Chrome's big break, and more...

August 2009: Snow Leopard, a world without Word?, Kindle competitors, and more...

July 2009: Blu-ray, e-readers, taming the storms, and more...

June 2009: Welcome to the Dow, Blackberry's revenge, Jobs' return, and more...

May 2009: Hot new search engines, big cats, smart phones, and more...

April 2009: Oracle's big buy, cloud computing, Jackalopes and more...

Feb 2009: Dancing with the Stars, Gates's shocker, geo-location, and more...

Jan 2009: Data breaches, bankrupcies, store closings, and other bummers...

Nov 2009: Digital health, Spammers, SaaS, and more...

Oct 2009: Fast Growth VARs, Windows 7, ARC Winners, and more...

We've posted our annual look at new technology vendors on the hunt for channel partners. Why should solution providers take a chance with a new vendor? In Finding Growth With Emerging Vendors Steven Burke reports:

"Solution providers say emerging vendors across the board... are delivering hands-down greater return on investment for them and their customers. They say emerging vendors are more channel-friendly... and provide better technical support and service... Not only that, they say they are able to get to developers and make product changes that benefit their clients."

But where to start? Online now, you'll find 140 new companies listed in our Emerging Vendors Directory including a breakdown by technology sector; complete details about each of them in our Databank of Emerging Vendors, along with an Advanced Search to help you sort out the list in even more detail.

In addition, you'll find slide show profiles of many of the top emerging vendors in a number of technologies, including Software, Virtualization, Hardware, Storage, Networking and Security, along with the indespensible guide to the Coolest Emerging Vendors.

Get to know them. They may be helping you advance your business before you know it.

The deadlines to participate in two of our key channel projects of the year are being held open a couple more days, but the time to get in is now!

Fast Growth identifies those VAR and solution provider businesses that are bucking the economy and scoring strong year-over-year growth. The application is at http://www.crn.com/fastgrowthform.

Women In The Channel recognizes leading women executives at solution provider, distribution and vendor companies. Apply at http://www.crn.com/mpw_form.

Both applications are free, and could result in beaucoup bragging (and marketing) opportunities for you and your organization. But they both close this week -- don't say I didn't warn you.

We've got a new accolade waiting for some of the hottest technology startup companies to claim as their own:

"Today’s startups are hard at work developing tomorrow’s killer products. Because of the importance of this work, Everything Channel will recognize technology’s top startups in the August issue of CRN magazine, as well as at XChange ’09."

Eligible companies must have launched in 2006 or later, and have had products in the market for for less than a year.

The application is available here, and the deadline for entries is June 30. Get all the info at sproutstartup.com.

We've just posted our much-anticipated annual guide to the top solution providers in North America: The 2009 VAR 500.

At the heart of the 500 is, of course the list, the definitive guide to the channel's elite. This year, you can search the companies of the VAR 500, see past year's lists and see how companies have changed their positions over time. You'll also find separate breakouts of the newcomers to the list, public companies on the list, and the top revenue gainers.

In other features, Jennifer Bosavage takes a look at what makes this year's companies winners, and also provides a handy list of Five Take-aways From The 2009 VAR 500; Andrew Hickey looks at how VAR 500 companies are handling finding and retaining good employees; Chad Bernstdon examines how these companies are creating opportunities from stimulus spending; and Scott Campbell learns how this year's newcomers made it into the big time.

We've opened up nominations for our annual guide to the most powerful and influential women in the channel -- including solution provider, vendor and distribution executives.

Last year's guide included leaders such as Cisco's Wendy Bahr, Arrow Electronics' Cathy Morris and Symantec's Julie Parrish. In the year that's passed, new solution providers and vendors have reshaped the industry, and we're once again looking for those women making a difference at their organizations.

You can nominate yourself, or someone else who you see as an effective and inspiring leader. Entries are free, and the deadline is June 12. But why wait? Apply today!

While the best place to sound off about Channelweb or any particular article we've posted is right here in Channelweb Connect, we do get a good amount of reader email. A few recent ones were too good not to share:

Some people really don't like those 'welcome ads:'

"Dear Sir,
It is very aggravating to click on a link to your site and get redirected to a full page advertisement. Sure I can click to move to your page but I should not have to. I will watch for your page in the future to not even visit it. Better yet I will block your page in my browser. I love Linux.

Nobody that loves Linux could ever be over-dramatic. Meanwhile, this next person has more general issues with us, and, well, the whole internet. Again, their solution is to block the site, lest they ever be tempted to visit again:

"I regularly run into trouble on a lot of sites that want to write cookies, or run scripts; attempting to leave a comment, or validate a login, such as the immensely-long URL below, puts me into a loop that tells me to repeat the same action continuously. I can't be bothered, I actually do have a life outside of browsing commercial Web sites. Such sites end up in my hosts file so I don't accidentally try again later, after I forget what ticked me off in the first place.

Harsh. But fair. On the other hand, some people seem to like us overall, but have issues with specific articles. In one article, we mentioned celebrity Ashton Kutcher, prompting this response:

"I'm am so sick to death of reading about this non-news story. I can't believe how many media outlets are headlining this story when it isn't even worth two sentences in an obscure blog somewhere. When is the news media going to stop publishing stories about washed up celebrities, like Mr. Kutcher, who do these things just to get their names out there. THIS IS NOT NEWS!!!!!"

No, but Google eats it up. On another topic, is the term 'paper boy' offensive? I didn't think so, and I was one, but maybe things have changed. Regarding No More Paper Boy: New York Times Reader 2.0 Delivers, we were chastened:

"I find your headline "No more paperboy," not just lacking in humor but entirely inaccurate regarding the content of the story it tops."

On a more serious topic, I'm curious to hear from readers on the following issue. Our stats show that over 7% of our readers are visiting with Internet Explorer 8, and it seems to work for us, but we have heard this complaint more than once:

"With IE 8.0 you can not open up the crn.com website or any article in this newsletter. I have attached the error screen. Do you know if others are experiencing this as well. Any ideas on a solution?

Does this happen to you? Let me know.

Finally, an email from this morning, from a CRN subscriber:

"I was looking for an article from my April CRN issue on Comptia (based on your search engine rating so were others).
So I registered and could find nothing even mentioning the mag, much less the article.
It appears from your site that the two are not even linked (other than the site URL on the mast of the mag) so I really feel used."

In this case, the reader is completely right - the Comptia cover story from the most recent CRN was delayed going online. But the wait will soon be over. The article, along with much additional reporting, will be posted at 3:00 ET today. Thanks for checking!
Update: Here it is.