Best in Show: 19 Web Sites to Watch
Web sites honored at annual social media conference.
March 15, 2010— -- Looking for a new Web site to help occupy your downtime?
Nineteen Web sites were awarded top honors Sunday night at the annual South by Southwest Interactive Conference, a five-day, social-media fest. From dozens of cutting-edge and interesting Web sites launched, or totally redesigned, in 2009, one site in each category, including activism, music and technical achievement, took home the top prize.
Check out the winners below:
Activism: Waterlife -- An interactive Web site about pollutants threatening the Great Lakes.
Amusement: Atlast Obscura -- A collection of the "world's wonders, curiosities and esoterica."
Art: odosketch -- An online drawing application that lets you create animated sketches.
Blog: The Vile Plutocrat -- A news site "to keep track of those individuals whose implacable greed poisons the societies that made them wealthy."
Business: TheyMakeApps -- The "Yellow Pages of developers," the Web site makes it easy to find a Web developer or get noticed if you are one.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Legwork Studio -- Web site for design studio in Denver. (The category showcases sites that "push the boundaries of CSS coding technology.")
Classic: Mint -- A free financial planning Web site.
Community: Aardvark -- A "social search engine" that helps users find people who have specific information.
Educational Resource: 1066 -- An educational site that lets players duke it out between the English, Viking or Norman armies.
South by Southwest Interactive Conference Awards Top Web Sites
Experimental: BooneOakley -- A YouTube-based Web site for a creative agency.
Film/TV: Jim Carrey -- A mind-bending Web site from the famous funnyman.
Games: Smokescreen -- A game about life online.
Mobile: Gowalla -- A location-based, smart-phone application that lets users share their location and find their friends.
Motion Graphics: We Choose the Moon -- An interactive Web site recreating the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
Music: Echo & the Bunnymen -- Web site for the band Echo & the Bunnymen.
Personal Portfolio: Clouds 365 Project -- Web site for photographic experiment shooting clouds everyday.
Student: D.I.E. -– Der Interuniversale Erdball Inc. -- A German student Web site.
Technical Achievement: Wolfram Alpha -- An online "computational knowledge engine" led by scientist Stephen Wolfram.
People's Choice Award: Cornify -- The "#1 unicorns and rainbow service worldwide, providing sparkles and happiness for all."
Best of Show Award: Wolfram Alpha