Memorial Day signals the unofficial beginning of summer, so perhaps you now have more free time to explore some fantastic websites that may have eluded you. Time for some summer surfing of the best of the best… well, at least the best according to Webby Awards voters!

Everyone loves a winner… especially when you voted for one, right? From American Idol to Dancing with the Stars and even the last presidential election with the highest voting turnout ever. We are wired to care and then let others know just how much. So, did your favorites win?

(http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=13) (Be patient for all the links and logos to load…)

Unfortunately, you are too late to vote for this year’s winners (or maybe you did), but you can still reap the benefits by visiting the winners and “almost winners” (aka – nominees). Most of these sites promise to at least entertain and at most educate or even transform your life.

From Activism and Art to Travel, Weird, and Youth… over 70 categories to explore and surf to your little (or big) heart’s content, including a list of “Bests” for any aspiring web designer to admire. There are even different sections for Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile award winners, the last being a burgeoning “frontier” for future online experiences.

Plus, for more surfing fun, be sure to check out all the winners going back to 1997, which is apparently the time when the World Wide Web (WWW) really began (thus, no awards previously). Back then there were only 15 categories (not surprisingly, “Weird” has always been popular!). Only problem with the older listings is that some of the winning sites no longer exist. So goes the evolving webscape… Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, then poof! (But you may be able to find them using the Wayback Machine at Archive.org).

In addition to the website award winners (who then get to put a cute Webby logo on their site for as long as they want to gloat), other awards are awarded by a select committee (aka – not you or me). This year, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the so-called inventor of the WWW (no, it wasn’t invented by Al Gore) will be awarded with a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award. Other awardees this year include Seth MacFarlane, Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Fallon, and Trent Reznor.

Futhermore, if you’re looking for a summer travel idea… you can attend the Webby Awards Celebration Gala (http://www.webbyawards.com/resource_center/tickets/), which is June 8th in New York City. Or, if you can’t make it, you can at least make plans to be a voter for next year’s slate – sign up at the site (http://www.webbyawards.com) – in the left margin under “GET THE 011.”

The Webby Awards are more than just another example public participation through voting for your favorite web sites. They are a classic display of a growing part of today’s connected global culture where our daily lives increasingly intertwine with online resources and people. The WWW is now more than a novelty, it’s quickly becoming a daily necessity!

Happy surfing and be sure to hop on in the voting wave next spring! Then you can say, “I voted for a winner!”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Exclusively Online, Tech Tips.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.