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Webby Awards Part 1

It’s Webby time again.

It’s Webby time again.

For the past seven years, the Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science, have sifted through cyberspace to find what a group of judges deem to be the top five sites in any one of 30 different categories. The top site in each category will be selected by the panel of judges for the Webby Award show on June 5.

The finalists for this year’s Webby’s were announced last week.

The public can also vote for a People’s Voice Award until the deadline on May 23, with the winner to be presented at the award show. New this year, there will also be a Webby Business Awards, a separate show for e-commerce, with more than a dozen different award categories. Nominations for those awards close on May 30, and the winners will be announced this fall.

Not only do the Webby Awards help to establish new standards for Web appearances and content while directing businesses and the public towards the leading sites on the Internet, they also provide Cybernaut with weeks upon weeks of filler – quality filler, but filler nonetheless.

The Webby categories are Activism, Best Practices, Broadband, Commerce, Community, Education, Fashion, Film, Finance, Games, Government and Law, Health, Humour, Living, Music, Net Art, News, Personal Web Site, Politics, Print and Zines, Radio, Science, Services, Spirituality, Sports, Technical Achievement, Travel, TV, Weird, and Youth.

Activism

ActForChange – www.actforchange.com

It’s time for social progressives, environmentalists, and other liberals to put their money where their mouth is. ActForChange is the complete activist site, offering "opinions, news, and action opportunities for people with progressive values." Rather than saying "this is bad" and "someone should do something about this," ActForChange will direct you to the petitions, inform you of protests and boycotts, and hook you up with a community of like-minded people in your areas. Check out WorkForChange and the ShopForChange sites while you’re here.

Greenpeace – www.greenpeace.org

Although Greenpeace really needs no introduction, there’s a lot more to this organization than piloting zodiac’s between whalers and whales. From global warming, to logging, to endangered species, to water pollution, to air pollution, to soil erosion, Greenpeace has a campaign going.

Voice Yourself – www.voiceyourself.com

This site is sponsored by Woody Harrelson and Laura Louie, and is a call-out for people to get involved in the environmental movement, sustainability, politics, socio-economic groups, and, naturally, the campaign to promote hemp.

World Resources Institute – www.wri.org

Simply put "WRI is an environmental research and policy organization that creates solutions to protect the planet and improve people’s lives." To give you an idea of what’s on this site, two of the featured articles this month were about the environmental consequences of the Iraq war, and a report on the world’s river basins.

Best Practices

Commanding Heights Online – www.pbs.org/commandingheights/

Commanding Heights is a PBS show and interactive Web site about The Battle for the World Economy. Topics include globalization, world trade, economic development, and the forces, values and ideas that shape the global economic system.

Edutopia Online – www.glef.org

Edutopia looks at the state of public education in America, and looks at ways that schools are improving their finances and educational programs, as well as engaging students to learn.

Moveable Type – www.moveabletype.org

Moveable Type "is a decentralized, web-based personal publishing system designed to ease maintenance of regularly updated news or journal sites, like weblogs." Moveable Type is actually a kind of software that harvests information, like newspaper headlines, of interest to the user on the topics that they specify, and posts that information to your database. If you’re not computer literate, it’s probably not for you.

Theban Mapping Project – www.thebanmappingproject.com

The Theban Mapping Project has been working for more than 25 years to create an archaeological database of the ancient city of Thebes, in Egypt, including the Valley of the Kings.

Wired News – www.wired.com

For more than a decade, Wired has been the publication of record for the Internet world. Always topical, often off-beat, this magazine is a staple for everyone who has a computer, and likes to stay on top of technology and trends.

Broadband

BET Hollagram – http://hollagram.bet.com

You want to shout out a holla to your friends, go to this astonishing interactive tool built by Black Entertainment Television. You can pick a character, and change almost everything about them – head height, head width, mouth size, makeup colouring, clothes, necklace, hair colour, hair style, you name it – with some really cool tools. When your done, you can add your voice, and e-mail a custom message to any of your friends.

CBC Radio 3 – www.cbcradio3.com/

This site made me proud to be Canadian. It’s absolutely the coolest thing that the CBC has ever done, and if you’ve ever been a fan of late night CBC radio, that’s really saying something. This site has music, art, articles on music and art, interviews, photography, and just about everything you could ask for. I’d never heard of this before the Webby Awards, so I owe them one because it’s now in my bookmarks.

Heavy – www.heavy.com

Heavy has always been pretty much one of the coolest sites around, with online magazines, music, games, animations, and all kinds of weird, edgy content that will keep you coming back for more.

Commanding Heights – see above in Best Practices

Homeless – www.abc.net.au/homeless/

This site follows the lives of six homeless people in six different cities. It’s real, it’s explicit, and although it’s hard to watch sometimes, it really is an incredible piece of documentary work.