Webby Winners Announced

The winners of The 11th Annual Webby Awards will be saluted at a June 5th gala in New York City. Webby Awards are given in a wide range of categories, including new categories honoring online film and video, interactive advertising and mobile content. In addition, over 400,000 votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, videos and ads in The Webby People’s Voice Awards. A full list of both Webby Awards and People’s Voice Awards winners is at www.webbyawards.com.

Also known as the “Oscars of the Internet,” The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Webby Award Winners range from powerhouses such as NPR (Podcasts), Nike (Retail) and Sony (Home Page) to independent sites including Blip.tv (Broadband), “we make money not art” (Cultural Blog), Last.fm (Music), and Wikitravel (Travel).

Webby People’s Voice winners include Facebook (Social/Networking), Save the Internet (Activism), Dream it Do it (Associations), Best Week Ever (Celebrity/Fan), FabSugar (Fashion), Treehugger (Cultural Blog), Gifts.com (Services) and TripAdvisor (Travel). Multiple Webby Awards winners include: Flickr, Adobe, HowStuffWorks, Jonathan Yuen, BBC and LinkedIn.

Achieving both critical and popular consensus, 20 sites won both a Webby Award and a People’s Voice Award including: Norelco’s ShaveEverywhere.com (Beauty/ Grooming), Truthdig (Politics), Pan’s Labyrinth (Movies), The Onion (Humor), Mindflood Seduction (Professional Services) and Cute Overload (Weird).

Winners for the inaugural Webby Film and Video Awards range from major networks like NBC’s “The Office Webisodes” (Comedy-Short) to upstart Eepybird.com’s “Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments” (Viral).

Organizers also announced recipients of this year’s Webby Special Achievement awards, including awards to Rock icon David Bowie, the eBay Community and Webby People of the Year — YouTube Co-Founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.

University Launches Online Degree

The University of Essex has announced that they intend to make available new online degree programs in cooperation with Kaplan, a global provider of education and training.

The University of Essex program is a wholly online Foundation degree course. The course will offer multiple start dates throughout the year with a continuous 52-week academic calendar, and will allow students to study wherever they have access to the Internet. Students without the time or opportunity to engage in a full-time Foundation course will now be able to pursue a higher-education qualification focused on helping them develop relevant and practical work-based skills.

Introduced in 2001, Foundation degrees are a higher education qualification combining academic study with work-based learning. They can lead to entry into a Bachelor’s degree program. In 2006, more than 60,000 students were registered for Foundation degrees in the UK.

The University and Kaplan have agreed to establish an affiliated college of the University, named “Kaplan Open Learning,” which will deliver the courses with degree awards being made by the University. Scheduled online classes will connect staff and students through both live audio and chat rooms to encourage active discussion and interactive learning in real time. Students can contact their own dedicated academic adviser and tutors outside regular class hours.

The first course accredited by the University of Essex for Kaplan Open Learning, Business Studies, will begin in July. There are four Business Studies course pathways: Business and Management; Entrepreneurship; Marketing and Sales Management; and Internet Marketing. It is expected that students will be able to earn a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Essex if they successfully complete a third year top-up course. Further courses are expected to follow.

Most to Have a Second Life

By the end of 2011, according to Gartner, Inc., 80 percent of active Internet users and Fortune 500 enterprises will have a “second life,” but not necessarily in Linden Lab’s Second Life. Gartner’s advice to enterprise clients is that this is a trend that they should investigate and experiment with, but they should limit substantial financial investments until the environments stabilize and mature.

“The collaborative and community-related aspects of these environments will dominate in the future, and significant transaction-based commercial opportunities will be limited to niche areas, which have yet to be clearly identified,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, the majority of active Internet users and major enterprises will find value in participating in this area in the coming years.”

As enterprises try to define their role in the virtual world, Gartner has identified five laws for companies participating in the virtual world. They include:

First Law: Virtual worlds are not games, but neither are they a parallel universe (yet).

Second Law: Behind every avatar (virtual identity) is a real person. Gartner said people can’t be fooled by the fantasy elements in the virtual world. There are unwritten rules, and expectations for behavior and culture are developing. Enterprise users must consider their corporate reputations.

Third Law: Be relevant and add value. Many commercial companies have established a virtual world presence, but none have converted it into an effective, profitable sales channel.

Fourth Law: Understand and contain the downside. Enterprises face serious questions, such as “Could activities in the virtual world undermine or influence my organization/brand in the real world?” With significant portions of the virtual economy based on adult oriented activities, questions of appropriate behavior and ethics also arrive.

Fifth Law: This is a long haul.

Gartner recommends that enterprises should experiment with virtual worlds, but not plan massive projects, and look for community benefits rather than commerce. “Find enthusiasts within your enterprise and support them. Understand the implications for access to open virtual platforms from within the enterprise and the risks involved,” Prentice said. “Despite the concerns within companies, don’t ignore this trend. They will have a significant impact on your enterprise during the next five years.”

Intel Showcases New Notebooks

Intel has announced a host of new technologies, including faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors, for its latest-generation Intel Centrino processor technology used in notebook PCs for consumers and businesses.

More than 230 Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro processor technology-based designs from PC manufacturers, resellers and integrators around the world are expected to take advantage of these and other features this year. Notebooks will come in a plethora of shapes and sizes, with designs ranging from fully loaded, 17-inch wide-screen models ideal for entertainment, to tiny, energy-saving notebook PCs that weigh less than three pounds.