The Best of the Web: The 1998 Webby Award Winners

www.entropy8.com

The online gallery of 26-year-old photographer/sculptor/Web designer Auriea Harvey--and a Webby winner for the second straight year.

Site Specifics: Harvey, formerly an art director at Poppe Tyson Interactive, used this site as a launching pad for her Web design firm, Entropy8 Digital Arts. "It's the equivalent of an amateur home page, where people display photos of their dog--but with better pictures."

Top Draws: The gallery section is especially popular, "because visitors like the animated interface. And it's the place where you see most of the work I've done outside of being digital."

www.thewell.com

The prototype of the virtual community, the Well is a subscription-based conferencing system that enjoys a fanatical following.

Top Draws: "The media conference is a star conference; there are a lot of writers and journalists and broadcasters and also media critics. The Generation X conference is more playful but also really popular. Books and movies are always very strong. Weird is somewhat legendary. And the Grateful Dead conferences--even after Jerry's death--remain strong."

starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov

A NASA-sponsored astronomy site for children ages 4 to 14, with kid-friendly graphics, photos, and quiz questions.

Site Specifics: "We wanted to put up a place for young kids because every 6-year-old is excited about space. So in the summer of '96, two teachers spent their summer writing the text and developing the activities for the site....We'd never been in the same room at the same time; this collaboration has really taken place over the Internet."

www.imdb.com

An exhaustive filmography database, fully searchable and hypertext-linked.

Site Specifics: "The largest independent movie site on the Web... and de facto home page for Hollywood," IMDB was founded by Oxford University scholar Col Needham in 1990 and launched on the Web in September 1993. Today, it boasts information about more than 130,000 movies from the 1890s to 2002 (yes, future films), as well as entries on 2 million films and 500,000 people. It's also a two-time Webby Award winner.

www.bezerk.com

Berkeley Systems' online collection of multiplayer games, from word mind-bender Acrophobia to irreverent "netshow" trivia fest You Don't Know Jack.

Site Specifics: "Shortly after Acrophobia launched, we received letters from college students blaming us for failing their finals.... And a note from the 'Jack the netshow' side said, 'I think the answer to this question is wrong, and you better look it up because my wife beat me because of this question, and I've been paying the price ever since!'"

www.mayohealth.org

"Geared to the lay public--not physicians or nurses," O@sis offers current information on nutrition, illnesses, and preventive care.

Site Specifics: Its site launched in 1995, but the Mayo Clinic is over 100 years old.

Top Draws: "Ask Mayo, a service where people submit questions, then answers to select questions are posted online. Interactive quizzes are also popular. They offer an easy and fun way to learn about health issues, from cholesterol to alcoholism."

www.babycenter.com

A resource for expectant and new parents.

Site Specifics: "We had a woman go into labor in one of our chat rooms. Other people in the chat room told her to leave work and go to the hospital."

Top Draws: "Personal Page, where people provide us with their due date or birth date and we provide weekly updates of what they should be thinking about at each stage of pregnancy or any change of development. We also have Baby Namer--where you enter your criteria and we'll suggest all the names from a database of 5000 that match."

NomineesBetter Homes and Gardens Online

www.bhglive.com

www.gurl.com

An interactive zine for teen girls, tackling the topics that never go away: beauty, culture, emotions, and sexuality.

Site Specifics: "We're popular with girls of this age group because we aren't afraid to be direct and humorous in discussing changes in bodies and different things girls encounter in adolescence. I think they're used to people skirting around the issues....It's a way for girls to deal with these anxieties instead of trying to find a product-based cure--which most publications for adolescent girls focus on."

www.vanguard.com

A refreshingly even-handed guide to financial matters ranging from tax law strategies to retirement planning, this site also serves as a convenient spot "for investors to learn about Vanguard and to execute transactions and interactions with Vanguard."

Site Specifics: "Somebody told us that the IRS was telling people who have questions about Roth IRAs to contact Vanguard because we've got a great series of tools."

Top Draws: The front page, which carries regularly updated news, and the (now withdrawn) area on last year's tax relief act.

NomineesInternational Real Estate Digest

ired.com

www.experience.org

An interactive preview of Seattle's Experience Music Project Museum.

Site Specifics: Funded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, the museum is dedicated to the creative process in American music--rock and roll, jazz, and blues. The online version invites visitors to "look at our exhibit, ideas, and artifacts of rock and roll history."

Top Draws: Northwest Passage, with its illustrated grunge family tree, and the Guitars section, which lets Web surfers compare the sounds of different guitars.

www.news.com

A late-breaking-technology news site.

Top Draws: "The Apple stories are always a good draw; it's interesting how passionate the Apple readers are. The launch of the browsers has been a huge story, too. And we did a really humongous package on ActiveX, looking at where ActiveX is going, and that was a comprehensive report--and a big hit."

allpolitics.com

CNN and Time magazine team up to offer political news, analysis, and polls.

Site Specifics: "We aren't required to wait until the evening news at 6 or the next news break on CNN....During the Senate campaign fund-raising hearings, we were streaming live video, gavel to gavel....The most embarrassing moment for us was when we had about seven weeks to launch the site. We set up the e-mail box and didn't realize what the response would be. We were backlogged by probably 10,000 messages. For about five months, we spent time trying to dig ourselves out. It was a true understanding of what an interactive medium the Web is."

www.salonmagazine.com

A smart, lively, daily Web review of politics, arts, and entertainment. Think the New Yorker, but online.

Site Specifics: "Like a good dinner party, Salon prides itself on having an interesting group of people at the table who are happy and willing to argue with each other and thrash out the leading issues of the day."

Top Draws: "Our books coverage--which includes book reviews, author interviews, and cover stories on major books--has been consistently popular. We have an unusually strong literary audience."

audionet.com

An online broadcast network delivering music, sports, and talk shows via RealPlayer.

Site Specifics: "AudioNet delivers more live and on-demand audio and video broadcasts than any other company in the world to the largest multimedia audience on the Web."

Top Draws: "Radio and sports are the most popular. Most AudioNet radio listeners can't receive the signal of their favorite local radio station in their office buildings. Many college alumni and other sports fans live far away from their favorite station or sports team."

www.exploratorium.edu

An online museum of the physical and life sciences, art, and perception.

Site Specifics: "We're an extension of the Exploratorium Museum itself [located in San Francisco], presenting information and things for people to try and do, and hopefully experiment and learn on their own....Think of it as a museum floor without any walls."

NomineesIBM Patent Server

patent.womplex.ibm.com

www.sportsline.com

A free Web site (plus some membership components), devoted to "sports information, entertainment, and merchandise." Covers the basics--baseball, basketball, football, and hockey--plus cricket, soccer, and other less mainstream enthusiasms.

Site Specifics: "Apple Computer may have started in a garage; we started four years ago in a hotel lobby--at the Westin in Fort Lauderdale, Florida."

Top Draws: "Whatever's happening right now: scores, news, chat, columns."

newyork.citysearch.com

One of 19 regional CitySearch sites--some of them not yet open--CSNYC covers "everything from arts and entertainment to dining to shopping to living in the city."

Top Draws: Arts & Entertainment is the most popular--including music, movies, art galleries, and museums: "It's really the core of what we're about." Restaurants & Bars also gets consistently high traffic.

Lonely Planet Online

www.lonelyplanet.com

www.pbs.org

An online supplement to the PBS network's educational programming ( P.O.V., Nova, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and so on).

Site Specifics: "We reach every type of user. We have 4-year-olds dragging their parents to the computer because they want to see Arthur or Sesame Street....We received an e-mail from a father who said his 6-year-old was writing www.pbs.org in chalk on the basement floor....And we hear from senior citizens who tell us they are buying modems to go to the Online NewsHour."