The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (harumph!) has announced its 2006 Webby Awards. Here’s a list of all the winners and nominees. You would expect The Onion to win best humor site and PayPal to win best financial services site. Here are a few of the cited sites you might not have seen:

Best Businessc Blog: 5 Blogs Before Lunch

Best Family/Parenting site: GoCityKids

Best Game: Stackopolois

Best Music Site: Fabchannel

Best Retail Site: Sherwin-Williams Color Visualizer (it really is pretty cool)

Best Youth Site: Above the Influence

This eBaum’s World clip is one of the coolest I’ve seen in a while, mainly because the camera used to make it only costs $129 and the video effects software is free. Back when Roger Rabbit was in theaters, this sort of thing was state of the art. Now it can be yours for about the cost of a decent DVD player. Remarkable.

Enjoy the holiday.

Here’s an interesting article about Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick jumping on a hot issue — in this case, the furor over MySpace. The suggested legislation defines “commercial social networking websites” and “chat rooms,” and as this C|Net article points out, could affect not just MySpace, but a wide range of online services, from AOL to Xbox 360.

But here’s one more piece of language in the bill that ought to be defined: “material that is harmful to minors.” What does that mean, and who makes that determination? I’ve placed two calls to Rep. Fitzpatrick’s offices requesting an answer to that question; should one come, I’ll post it here.

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience — well, that comes from poor judgment.”
—A.A. Milne