Based on the number of times they appeared in reader gripes in 2006, I'm nominating ten candidates for the honor of Worst Vendor of 2006: AOL, Apple, Dell, Earthlink, EBay, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, and Verizon. You can vote for your choice (only once, please) by finding the poll in the left-hand column next to this story, and you can see how readers are voting. But there are other ways to cast your vote, and you're invited to try them all.

We've had a lot of fun with the GripeLog polls over the last few years, and we've learned a lot from them too. But, of course, web polls are very unscientific and prone to ballot box stuffing of various kinds. As readers often point out with our polls, you know going in that the big name vendors are the ones that will ring up the most tallies, so who the "winner" is in terms of sheer number of votes doesn't tell the whole story.

In point of fact, though, the greatest value in all the GripeLog polls we've done has always come from the comments readers have posted or e-mailed explaining why they voted the way they did, or telling me which vendor I left off the ballot that should have been there. Which makes sense. After all, my weblog is all about reader gripes, so getting to hear about the reasons why readers voted the way they did is more than worthwhile.

Two things have changed since I last ran a poll, though. One is the unfortunate fact that, as I explained a few weeks ago (see "Suspending Anonymous Posting" ), the link spam scum have forced me to require readers to have a log-in account in order to post comments. And, yes, so far that step appears to have been the right thing to do in bringing that problem under control. But it does mean it won't be as easy for casual visitors who come to vote in the Worst Vendor poll to post their thoughts, as they'll first have to go to the sign-up page.

Luckily, the other thing that's different provides a simpler way of making your voice heard. Now that I've started doing the Gripe Line podcasts, you can just phone your comments in by dialing the Gripe Line toll free number at 1 888 875-7916 and leaving a voice mail telling me who you think was the Worst Vendor of 2006 and why. It will be interesting to see how the results we get over the phone match up with the weblog poll tally and the online comments.

You don't have to choose which method to use, however, because you're welcome to do both. And, of course, you're welcome to e-mail your comments to me at Foster@gripe2ed.com as well. And neither are you restricted to talking about one of my ten nominees - if you have a candidate you think is even more worthy of this coveted title, let us hear it.

So vote once in the poll and vote often by posting, phoning, and/or e-mailing your comments. Toward the end of the month I'll do both a weblog story and a podcast announcing the winner or winners. And you'll also get to hear - quite literally in the case of the podcast - some of the choicest comments readers contributed to back up their votes. Whichever company you think earned the honor of being called the Worst Vendor of 2006, let them know how much you care by sounding off on the Gripe Line.