The founders of the popular social networking site MySpace.com are among the winners of this year's Webby online achievement awards.
Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe will receive an award next month for breakout of the year. The Webby winners were announced on Tuesday in advance of next month's ceremony.
Largely through word of mouth, their site now has nearly 77 million registered users and eclipses most Web sites in traffic, including Google Inc's search engine. It even got the attention of News Corp, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, which bought Intermix Media Inc for its MySpace business for US$580 million in cash last year.
"Everyone is using it, from politicians to rock stars to students to people of all ages," said Tiffany Shlain, the founder of the Webby Awards, billed in some circles as the Oscars for the Internet.
She said the breakout category "is really about a site that becomes pervasive in our culture."
Other special-achievement recipients include Robert Kahn for lifetime achievement. Kahn, along with Vint Cerf, invented the Internet's key communications protocols, known as TCP/IP.
Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, was named person of the year.
The artist-of-the-year award went to Gorillaz, a cartoon-fronted rock group billed as a pioneer in fusing music and animation.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire Internet businessman who also owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, was named entrepreneur of the year. Organizers credited his role as an ``evangelist for the power of technology to drive change.''
Winners were named in about 70 other business, consumer and culture categories. Google's map products won in three categories -- for best visual design/function, for broadband and for services. Last year's breakout winner, Yahoo's Flickr photo sharing site, won this year for best navigation/structure and best practices, while Yahoo picked up an honor for its podcasts.
The BBC won for community and news, and National Public Radio was honored for radio and religion/spirituality, namely its This I Believe audio segments.
The awards are given by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘UPHOLDING PEACE’: Taiwan’s foreign minister thanked the US Congress for using a ‘creative and effective way’ to deter Chinese military aggression toward the nation The US House of Representatives on Monday passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, aimed at deterring Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by threatening to publish information about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials’ “illicit” financial assets if Beijing were to attack. The act would also “restrict financial services for certain immediate family of such officials,” the text of the legislation says. The bill was introduced in January last year by US representatives French Hill and Brad Sherman. After remarks from several members, it passed unanimously. “If China chooses to attack the free people of Taiwan, [the bill] requires the Treasury secretary to publish the illicit
A senior US military official yesterday warned his Chinese counterpart against Beijing’s “dangerous” moves in the South China Sea during the first talks of their kind between the commanders. Washington and Beijing remain at odds on issues from trade to the status of Taiwan and China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions, but they have sought to re-establish regular military-to-military talks in a bid to prevent flashpoint disputes from spinning out of control. Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, and Wu Yanan (吳亞男), head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, talked via videoconference. Paparo “underscored the importance
The US House of Representatives yesterday unanimously passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, which aims to disincentivize Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by cutting Chinese leaders and their family members off from the US financial system if Beijing acts against Taiwan. The bipartisan bill, which would also publish the assets of top Chinese leaders, was cosponsored by Republican US Representative French Hill, Democratic US Representative Brad Sherman and seven others. If the US president determines that a threat against Taiwan exists, the bill would require the US Department of the Treasury to report to Congress on funds held by certain members of the
RSS