5th Web Awards gets 1,500 nominations

When the clock struck "12" on Sept. 22, some 1,500 nominations from all over Weblandia turned into legitimate entries to the next phase of The 5th Philippine Web Awards – the screening stage.

Like last year, nominations to the Corporate, Personal and Organizations categories topped the list for the most number of nominations. Corporate had 245 nominations, Personal received 185, while Organizations got 140.

Of the 19 categories, Music got the least with 24. "Most of the semifinalists, as well as the finalists of previous years, again made it – and they’re all looking good," said Heinz Buloz, chairman of the Web Awards technical committee. "However, there are also a lot of new entries that should give these Web Awards veterans stiff competition."

All 1,500 nominations (about the same as last year’s Web Awards) will be turned over to a screening committee which, over the next few weeks, will assay the whole collection to separate the good entries from those that don’t measure up to the basic requirements of content, design, usefulness and functionality. At this stage, culling will be confined to questions like "Does this entry correctly belong to the category it was nominated in?" and "Does this entry contain offensive material?"

The initial screening will pare down the original list to some 190 unique websites – the semifinalists. This will ultimately be pruned by the end of October to the 95 finalists that will vie for the 19 Best Web Site Awards, one for each of the 19 categories.

The list of finalists will be submitted to a panel of judges representing different fields, including the arts, computing, journalism, broadcast, e-business and the academe. Using the same set of criteria that the screening committee used but applied with a fine-toothed comb, the judges will submit the final list on the final week of November.

The 19 winners of the Best Web Site Award and another 19 for the People’s Choice will be announced at The 5th Philippine Web Awards Night on Nov. 29 at Dusit Hotel Nikko.

This year’s sponsors include Villmann Computer Systems Inc., 25*8, Yehey!, Nexus Technologies Inc., MyDSL and Wordtext Systems Inc.

Meanwhile, the People’s Choice Awards is now accepting nominations until Nov. 27 via online voting (www.philippinewebawards.com) and text messaging.

The People’s Choice Awards is a parallel contest to the Best Web Site Awards, but is based on popularity. It has the same 19 categories, but the total votes obtained (not ratings by the judges) determine the winners. Only websites that make it to the 190-entry semifinal list are entered in the People’s Choice Awards.

Voting by text messaging is made possible by a partnership with Chikka, the Philippine company that invented the ChikkaTxt Messenger. Anyone can simply text in his or her choices via Globe (2954), Smart (288) or Talk ’N Text (288).