For the first time since I got into this business in 1988, I find myself on the outside of an industry awards process -- instead of being one of the people who decides who gets in. At least the Force.com platform has managed to get within sight of the door, as one of Developer.com's finalists for Product of the Year in the category of Web Service Development Tool or Add-in.

If it weren't for Force.com, I'd still be writing pithy encomia for annual honorees (or their polar opposites) at eWEEK. Instead, almost a year ago, I left my eWEEK job of giving my opinions for a living -- because, almost four years ago, I found Force.com (not yet known by that name) to be a compelling new model of how applications could be developed in the Web, instead of being built (with a previous generation of tools) for cumbersome deployment to the Web.

I have insider's knowledge, to say the least, of how difficult a process it can be to come up with a useful short list of potential honorees. Even being a finalist is no small honor, and the list of finalists at Developer.com is a valuable guide to the most game-changing tools available to developers today.

I encourage you to review that slate -- and while you're there, to consider a click (no later than the deadline of Friday, December 21) to cast your vote for Force.com.