South by Southwest Interactive

A number of familiar names appear in the list of finalists this year, including:

• Six to Start’s “We Tell Stories” under “Experimental”
• The community-generated zombie documentary “Lost Zombies” under “Community”
• 42 Entertainment’s campaign for Batman: The Dark Knight “Why So Serious” under “Games”
• And a personal favourite of mine, “I Am Second” under “Activism”

(full list of finalists below)

List of SXSW 2009 Web Awards Finalists:

Activism

Clif Bar 2 Mile Challenge
I Am Second
Just In Queso
Sunny Side
Tweet Congress

Amusement

Addictionary
CrappyCat
GirlGamer.com
Pixton
UPS Regifter

Art

Forward Thinking Museum
Remembering Bogle Chandler
The Served
StreetArtLocator
Things I Have Learned in my Life, So Far

Blog

The Big Picture
The Bygone Bureau
Dumb As A Blog
OneRiot
Postcards From Yo Momma

Business

CNN Shirt
Jasmax
Lowe’s “Welcome Back Spring”
Modernista!
Zeus Jones Gift Guide

CSS

Eden Sessions
Trevor Exter
Mint.com
Noisefreak.com
ProjectMiso

Classic

Ars Technica
Flickr
Instructables
Picnik
StumbleUpon

Community

Delicious 2.0
Fluther
Lost Zombies
Protagonize
Trusera

Educational Resource

The Cycle
Discovery Earth Live
From Ellis Island to Orchard Street
HowStuffWorks
One Hen

Experimental

Foul Owl Karaoke
Popego
Sweemo
Ten Thousand Cents
We Tell Stories

Film / TV

Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub
Hulu
In Plain Sight: WITSEC Confidential
Jinni
Secret Location

Games

Adult Swim Games
Globulos
PMOG
PlayCrafter
Why So Serious? The Dark Knight Alternate Reality Game

Mobile

AP Mobile News Network
Brightkite
Gigotron
Pikchur
Please Fix the iPhone

Motion Graphics

ADE Creative Studio
The Corona Beach
NVIDIA Speak Visual
Synergy | ThyssenKrupp Elevator Corporation
What’s Your Lighting Style

Music

Tracy Chapman
The Finetune Family
SoundCloud
Spiritualized Haromonies
James Zabiela

Personal Portfolio

Ali Felski
Pericycle
Eric Piasecki: StockSearch
Revyver
Lynn Marie Smith

Student

Business of Detention
Michael Dick
Modernity Spirit of Experimentation
Think Artificial
Weekend Pictures

Technical Achievement

Absolut Machines
Aviary
jQuery UI ThemeRoller
Skydeck
Tarpipe

For last year’s Halo 3 Believe website website, AKQA (www.akqa.com) received silver for “Websites & Microsites”.

Synopsis:
The Halo 3 “Believe” site is the interactive companion to the global advertising campaign which positioned Master Chief as the greatest of Earth’s heroes. Utilizing sophisticated motion control cameras and digital compositing, the 1200 square foot diorama was transformed into a fully immersive experience, giving users the ability to interact with and explore the elaborate monument to humanity’s greatest battle as well as a wealth of other content.
(Halo 3: Believe – view the site)

Secondly, 42 Entertainment (www.42entertainment.com) received two awards for their Year Zero Alternate Reality Game with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails: the Grand Prix for ”Viral Advertising” and a Silver for “Interactive Campaigns”

Synopsis:
The ambitious Year Zero alternate reality game (ARG), a work of cross-media art involving websites, emails, phone calls, album packaging, tour t-shirts, thumb drives, music videos, murals, and live concert events with the new music of Nine Inch Nails at its core. Playing out over 10 weeks, the Year Zero ARG engaged over 2.5M participants. It started with a message hidden in the back of a concert t-shirt that lead to online websites – ultimately over 29 websites discovered over several months, 7.5M page views, 7M forum postings, 2M phone calls and thousands of original art submissions.
(NIN: Year Zero – see the overview)

Congratulations 42 Entertainment and AKQA!