By Rachel Chalmers
Ugly corporate sons-of-bitches, said jodi.org, winners of the 1999 Webby Award for Arts, before throwing their statue into the watching crowd. Jodi.org got one thing right; they kept their speech to the five-word maximum imposed by Webby Awards diva Tiffany Shlain. Though New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to poach the Webbies away from San Francisco for this, its third year, SF mayor Willie Brown managed to hang onto the awards ceremony by offering the Herbst Theatre as a venue and by throwing open the newly renovated San Francisco City Hall for the glittering post-party.
Bay Area webmasters responded by dressing up to the nines and turning out in force. The Webbies themselves offered few surprises. Amazon.com took top honors in the Commerce category, the Internet Movie Database prevailed in Film and the Motley Fool took the Finance laurel. The five word maximum did in fact elicit most of the ceremony’s entertainment. Thanks. Contributions are tax-deductible, said the California Voter Foundation, accepting the prize for Politics & Law, while PBS Online said simply: This one’s for Tinky Winky.
