The votes are in and TIME has published its top 100 influential people, or “breakouts, pioneers, moguls, leaders and icons”, in the world.

As we told you when the nominations were announced, 2012 appeared to be the year of technology. Of those nominated, the ones that actually made the list are a little surprising.

It’s important to note that once the nominees were announced, it was up to readers to choose the finalists. I’ll call it what it is, a “popularity contest”, but don’t think that these folks aren’t deserving of being recognized as influential.

Interesting to note is that some of the tech personalities listed below were profiled by some pretty big names. Salman Khan profiled by Bill Gates? Now that’s impressive.

According to TIME’s list, here are tech’s finest:

- Marc Andreesen
- Sheryl Sandberg (profiled by CEO of Coca-Cola)
- Tim Cook (profiled by Al Gore)
- Salman Khan (profiled by Bill Gates)
- Anonymous
- Pete Cashmore (profiled by Alyssa Milano)
- Alexei Navalny (profiled by Garry Kasparov)
- Daniel Ek (profiled by Ashton Kutcher)
- Walter Isaacson (Profiled by Madeleine Albright)

I’d agree with most of these names, including Anonymous, since the hacker group found its way into most major political and technology stories this year in one way or another.

The list also includes Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin, breakout stars in sports, which leads me to believe that the voting process should probably include categories of people to keep things honest, rather than one massive list..

Here is the entire list of 100 of the most influential people in the world according to TIME and its readers.

For the articles right?

The reason why it’s almost politically correct to buy the magazine is because the articles are often really good. Playboy offers buyers a way to defend their purchase and I’m sure that’s part of its success.

But who is kidding who? Without those nude photos it simply wouldn’t sell as well.

The magazine is a nice balance between photos (low level entertainment) and articles (high level entertainment) with a whole range of content in between. And it needs to be that. The articles are what gives the magazine a viable reason to exist.

So what is the lesson here? Include some naked people in your marketing brochure? Well no. But do think what the range of content is that you are providing.

Is there enough entertainment to go with your serious message? Can you alternate heavy content with lighter content? Is it possible to make your customers smile every now and then?

People often think that being businesslike is all about seriousness. That is a myth. Being businesslike is about providing a useful service to your customers. Making people happy is very useful. And rewarding.

P.S. Playboy is still the best selling magazine in the US with more than 3 million copies sold every month (2010). That surprised me.

Companies are taking a fresh look at older technologies and putting a prettier user experience on top of it. Flipboard is a perfect example of this, letting you read what your Facebook and Twitter friends post in a magazine style page-flipping experience.

heystaks wants to do just that for your Google and Bing search results. Available for both iOS and Android devices, heystaks does a beautiful job at giving you an experience that makes you want to check out more search results than you might on a regular Google search results page. You can sign up with your Facebook account, and your searches and tapped results are saved with your heystaks account.

Flip through search results

heystaks gives you a regular search box, but shows results split between Google and Bing. You can flip through the results and tap on the one you’d like to read, while keeping the other results at the bottom of the app. It’s a wonderful design, and solves the problem of clicking away from a Google result and never coming back.

You can add tags to any given search result, allowing the community to find the content easily as well.

Creating “staks” and sharing

You can create “staks”, which are shared search topics. These can be made public or private, and watching the public stak stream is pretty interesting. A public stream can be shared or seen of all of the results you’ve clicked on. The only downside of heystaks is that the sharing option for singular results is via email. Sharing a result via Twitter or Facebook would make me use this app more, but this is something the company can add without much effort.

Getting the most out of search results is something that Google is attempting by integrating the +1 information it’s collecting, to show you results that may interest you more. There are Google Labs items that let you see previews of results, but heystaks gives you a really nice mobile interface, while giving you results from both Google and Bing. It’s free and worth a look.

As AdAge MediaWorks reports today, Conde Nast’s Wired magazine is offering the latest issue of its iPad edition completely free thanks to a sponsorship from Adobe.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a move. Virgin’s Project iPad magazine is also currently free thanks to a deal with American Express, and as AdAge points out, Philips Electronics sponsored free access to the New Yorks Times’ original paywall way back in 2006.

However, we recently noted that the high (and in some cases, increasing) price of these magazines could be stunting their growth. So, even if the Project and Wired examples are just one-off experiments, is sponsorship a viable way forward to expand the market for these magazines?

It’s certainly a plausible scenario, as long as the sponsorship doesn’t interfere with the editorial. However, there are other barriers to wider spread adoption of the magazines amongst tablet owners.

You only have to look at one of the comments my last piece on iPad magazines generated to see one of their biggest problems. “All the mags seem to be dead set on simply stringing together images of pages with some embedded “interactive” content. In other words, apart from the fact that I get to watch cheesy video, the iPad “experience” adds nothing to the printed version except multi-hundred-megabyte downloads. In terms of convenience etc, the iPad versions are worth *less* than the printed copies,” said commenter Nick.

Late last year, we highlighted TRVL, an independent publication for the iPad that has opted for a different approach by making individual articles downloadable, removing the problem of giant downloads. While Trvl is currently free, its publishers tell me that they’re considering sponsorship for the future.

It’s worth pointing out that Wired is also launching new social sharing features with the latest issue. As AdeAge notes, “The Wired app now lets readers post links to its articles on Facebook and Twitter, even if they haven’t been posted on Wired’s website yet or, in the case of app edition exclusives, won’t be. The links lead back to specially created web pages that will encourage consumers to download the issue.” This reminds me of The Daily’s approach to sharing individual pages, and shows that such magazines are still developing a sense of exactly what they are, where they’re going and what yu can do with them.

While it’s too early to know if sponsorship will make a big difference to the number of downloads Wired and Project get, it’s certainly a trend to watch, and as long as there are enough sponsors willing to fork out enough money to make it work, we could well see much more of it in the future.

To us, it all sounds like a cross between existing tablet magazines and a Flipboard-style, customisable service. Here’s how Yahoo describes it:

Livestand is a digital newsstand that’s always fresh and effortlessly personalized. Sit back and enjoy the news, entertainment, and local information you love, right on your tablet. The more you use it, the more it gets to know you.

According to MocoNews, the project has been in development for a year and promises to offer more than just magazines in digitised form. Rich media and interactivity beyond merely commenting are both features being discussed.

Yahoo will offer Livestand as a portal for existing publishers to offer their magazines in digital form. Interestingly, in addition to the large publishers that you might expect, Yahoo will also be encouraging small, independent publishers to upload content to the platform.

Discussing the personalisation features on its own blog, Yahoo says: “As the premier digital media company, we see a clear opportunity to push the boundaries of personalization to deliver intelligent experiences specifically tailored for each individual.  This ultra personalized content experience is our vision for Livestand from Yahoo! – a digital newsstand, delivering a wealth of ever-changing content from multiple publishers, continuously programmed by a person’s interests and contexts.”

The approach to personalisation is intriguing, with customisation based on your interests, your location and even the time of day.

By announcing this now, Yahoo is heading off Google, said to be planning its own digital news stand offering in the near future.

There’s no release date for Livestand as yet, but the platform’s website says it’s coming soon. Yahoo also offers a Facebook page, which will keep you updated if you’re interested in learning more.

It is always very interesting to watch how digital media products from traditional media companies are covered in the press. The news always tends to be slightly hyperbolic, either breathless with expectation or oddly despondent. Today has not been an exception.

News broke earlier this morning that magazine sales on the iPad have declined from initial highs to lower levels, levels that given the massive install base of iPads around the world are perhaps surprising. Hence the furor around the article, ‘wasn’t the iPad supposed to save the struggling world of print?’

It still might. In fact, I posit that today’s data is actually meaningless in the long haul. For digital media to break out and begin to drive significant revenue for traditional print magazines several criteria need to be met. First, the price of the print magazine edition must be lower than the print version. Readers understand marginal cost; they are willing to pay, but want a discount for going digital. For an example of this, see the world of ebooks.

Secondly, distribution has to handled smoothly, in such a way that buying the digital content is convenient. Right now, that is the main element holding back magazine sales on the iPad. Distribution is just plain weak. The idea of having 15 different apps constantly on my iPad screen just to occasionally read a single issue of one (or redownloading a magazine app just to get the one issue that I want to read that year) is impractical and cumbersome.

Ask anyone in online sales: limiting the number of steps is the key to higher conversion rates. Therefore, to truly juice digital sales, all we need to see is an industry wide 20% price cut (from current levels), and a new method of sales. Fortunately, Apple is likely working on the second bit, with their much fabled ‘iNewsstand’ that will make it much simpler to actually pick up a magazine. It will also encourage browsing, something that will boost drive by sales.

Why have we seen the decline in sales? Because the hype is gone. No one is reminding me to go check out the latest issue of Vanity Fair on my iPad like they did when the apps first came out. People were told they existed, they picked up an issue, then forgot about the whole process. The conduit from reader to magazine declined over time, and along with it, sales.

I am not just making this up. Kindle tore up the rules in the world of books because it solved the price problem (something that they are still fighting a war over) and the distribution question (Whispernet and Read Anywhere). Jobs is a smart cookie, and he knows the weakness in the current Apple software lineup in regards to magazines. Trust me, he wants 30% of magazine sales, and so he is going to make sure that he gets it.

So today’s numbers are not surprising, if perhaps a little depressing. We had all hoped for more. We didn’t get it. That means that it is time to step up our game and keep innovating, not hang our heads and consign ourselves to defeat. Who said it was going to be easy to go from print rack to slate swipes?