Webby Awards: A reminder of the joys of web surfing

We’ve lost the joy of stumbling upon fun and interesting websites just by exploring online

A lot has changed about the internet in the past 20 years, but one of the most significant changes has been in how people use the internet.

Back in the beginnings of the World Wide Web, as it was called, the internet was a novelty and people spent an enormous amount of time “surfing the web” in search of interesting or creative websites.

Yahoo was a search engine organized in categories maintained by human editors rather than computers and every day Yahoo’s editors posted a link to a noteworthy website of the day.

These days the internet is seen as a functional tool and users regularly visit a handful of websites for shopping, banking, entertainment, social media, news, and finding information.

Yet, creative and important websites still exist and that is why the Webby Awards (www.webbyawards.com) are so important.

Now in its 22nd year, awards are given out to the best of the internet within the seven general headings of websites, film and video, advertising and public relations, mobile sites and apps, social, podcasts and digital audio, and games.

Within these media types over 13,000 entrants from 70 countries have been narrowed to finalists and the winners will be announced on April 24, accompanied by the annual live-streamed Webby Awards Show in New

York City.

An interesting quirk is that each award winner is limited to a five word acceptance speech.

Overseesing the judging is the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, whose 2,000 members include such luminaries as Ariana Huffington, Vint Cerf, reputedly the inventor of the internet, Jimmy Kimmel, and the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone.

There is also another panel of judges who will pick the winners of a second group of awards called the People’s Voice Awards. These are selected from ballots cast until April 19 by visitors to the Webby Awards site, and you can take part and vote by registering with your email address and creating a password.

Surveying the nominees at the Webby Awards website is a prodigious task since there are so many entrants in a large number of categories within the seven types of media.

It doesn’t help that the Webby homepage is a navigation challenge with four separate boxes that will take you to the People’s Voice voting page. When you reach the page scroll down and you’ll see the nominees in a randomly chosen category.

You can see each nominee’s entry by clicking on the white arrow in each thumbnail graphic or vote immediately by clicking or tapping on Vote, although you do not have to vote to explore the nominees.

There is a link to the right to load the next category or a random category, or a small link at the top to see a list all of the categories, which is what I usually select.

Peruse the lists, view the types and categories that interest you, and allocate a lot of time for browsing, clicking or tapping, and being amazed.

My first destination was to see the nominees in Activism and Best Use of Photography under the Websites heading, although in the Best Editing category in Film and Video I found a stunning video entitled Leningrad – Kolshik (vimeo.com/204150149). In the Art and Experimental section of the same media type I was able to see the fascinating Tokyo Light Odyssey (vimeo.com/213954770).

The rapid rise of mobile devices and virtual reality has been deftly and brilliantly illustrated by Reblink (www.impossiblethings.co/project/reblink), a project of the Art Gallery of Ontario and a nominee in the Mobile Sites and Apps category called Best Use of Augmented Reality. To experience the full effect you will need to download an app for your iPad, iPhone, or Android device. Competing against Reblink in the same category is Ikea’s Place (https://readymag.com/u18840271/889985) which is a fascinating app that will let you virtually place furniture in your room to see how it looks before you buy it.

The Webby Awards is the best opportunity you’ll have to relive the forgotten thrills of “web surfing.”