PLUS WINS a Webby!

We won a Webby!

At the Webby Awards - the Oscars for the internet - held last week, Plus magazine was officially named as the best science site on the web. The award, the leading international honour for web sites, was presented at a star-studded event at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a diverse, 350-person organization whose membership includes musician Beck, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie, Francis Ford Coppola, and Julia Child.

Dr Robert Hunt, Deputy Director of the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge, England, and Editor of Plus, was in San Francisco to accept the trophy in person. Adhering to the Webby Awards' famous five-words-or-fewer speech limit, Dr Hunt said "Maths is elegant; interesting; useful."

"This year's nominees and winners prove that the Web is alive and as dynamic as ever," said Tiffany Shlain, the founder and director of The Webby Awards. "We're incredibly proud to shine a spotlight on these stellar sites."

Thousands of Web aficionados tuned in to watch the Webby action live on ABCNews.com's webcast of the event, which included a red carpet pre-show hosted by veteran US newscaster Sam Donaldson. After the awards ceremony, which was hosted by actor Alan Cumming, guests and winners rubbed elbows at the post-ceremony bash.

Other winners included:

• BBC World Service ("Radio" category)
• Nationalgeographic.com ("Education")
• Yahoo! Finance ("Finance")
• Microsoft Windows Update ("Technical Achievement")
• Expedia.com ("Travel")
• PBS Online ("TV")
• Google ("Best Practices")
• Inside ("News", beating BBC News Online and CNN.com)
• Vint Cerf (the father of the internet, who won the award for "Lifetime Achievement")

Following the ceremony, Dr Hunt said, "This is a wonderful achievement in the face of such outstanding competition. I'm delighted!" Professor John Barrow, Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project of which Plus is a member, added: "We are all excited by this prestigious award. We're especially pleased to have won this award as Plus was one of only three UK-based nominees out of 150. Winning the Webby is a great achievement for a serious mathematics education site, which provides an entertaining, free mathematics internet magazine accessible to all."

The Millennium Mathematics Project is a long-term national and international initiative, based in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, England, with a broad aim to help people of all ages and abilities share in the excitement of mathematics and understand the enormous range and importance of its applications to science and commerce.