MySpace, Google among '06 Webby winners

Winners will be saluted at a June 12th gala at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, hosted by comedian Rob Corddry of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Keeping with tradition, winners will be limited to five-word acceptance speeches; last year's memorable five-word speeches included one from Webby Lifetime Achievement Award honoree former presidential candidate Al Gore, who said, "Please don't recount this vote."

This year's nominations included 5,500 entries from more than 40 countries for categories in consumer and culture, film, fashion and politics, and for such new categories as political blog, business blog, culture blog and podcast as well as best use of video or moving image.

Of those, the 535-member body of Web, business and creative experts from various industries -- musician David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening to name a few -- determined the winners of the 69 categories.

"The winners of the 10th Annual Webby Awards reflect the Web's incredible diversity and the vital role it plays in all aspects of our daily lives," said Webby founder Tiffany Shlain. "We're proud to salute the people and organizations whose groundbreaking ideas are reshaping how we experience our world."

Webby Awards included:

-- MySpace.com; founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe won Webby Breakout of the Year.

-- Webby Artist of the Year went to virtual band The Gorillaz.

-- Dr. Robert Kahn, co-founder of the Internet, won the Lifetime Achieve Award.

-- Webby Person of the Year went to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, author of "The World if Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century."

-- Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and HDNet, won Webby Entrepreneur of the Year.

-- Google Earth won Best Visual Design and Function, and Broadband Awards and Google Maps won best in Services.

-- Blog winners included: 5 Blogs Before Lunch (Business), we make money not art (Culture, Personal), and The Huffington Post (Political).

-- FabChannel.com won best in Music, ESPN.com for Sports, Expedia for Travel, Style Wars for Best Visual Design, Netart to PostSecret, Humor to The Onion, and nationalgeographic.com took best in Science for The Genographic Project.

-- Jewish social networking site JDate.com took best in social networking.

-- Politics award went to Open Secrets, Best in government went to San Francisco's Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security 72hours.org, The Katrina Help Center for Charitable Organization, Bank of America for Banking and Bill Paying, and Paypal in Financial Services.

-- Podcasts went to Yahoo! Podcasts.

Title sponsors for the awards are AOL.com and the Creative Group.

A full list of Webby winners and People's Voice Awards can be found at http://www.webbyawards.com.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International