Last night at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas the winners of the 13th Annual SXSW Web Awards were announced. The SXSW Web Awards competition uncovers the best new websites and celebrates those who are building tomorrow’s online trends.

The SXSW Festival began 22 years ago as a tiny music festival in the Texas capital and has grown into a ‘…massive, unavoidable media beast that reflects, discusses and showcases trends in culture and media but also often creates them’ (National Post, 3/13/08).

All websites submitted were launched or were completely redesigned in 2009 and were judged in 20 different categories, ranging from Activism, Music, CSS, Motion Graphics through to the prestigious People’s Choice and Best of Show awards.

All SXSW Web Awards entries are judged in three criteria:
• Visual Design: The appearance of the site.
• Creativity: Is the website unique? Does it offer something new or never before seen?
• Content: The meat and potatoes of the site. Is the subject matter worthwhile

Each category is narrowed down to five finalists by a panel of industry peers and experts. A second round of judging then determines the winner in each category – check out this years 2010 SXSW Web Award winners.

“South by Southwest is a talent showcase and a schmoozathon, a citywide barbecue party and a brainstorming session for a business that has been radically shaken and stirred by the Internet.” - New York Times, 3/15/08

Special mention has to be made of People’s Choice Award – the online public’s favorite finalist site from the competition: Cornify. A site that calls itself ‘the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide, providing sparkles and happiness for all’. A strange popular choice in my opinion. Especially when the prettyloaded.com site is surely the one to choose if you like amusing time wasters. Or when you could choose the beautiful (but s-l-o-w) Waterlife site, the experimental Livebrush site, the bizarre betyourfollowers.com or the surreal Jim Carrey site. Who would get your People’s Choice Award vote…?

Also worth checking out is the winner of this years Best of Show Award, the judges’ favorite finalist website from the competition, which went to: Wolfram Alpha – a somewhat visually uninspiring yet technically inspiring (complicated… ? Very! ) site that computes answers to users’ questions instead of merely searching for existing sites. This also won the Technical Achievement award ‘for sites that are re-inventing and re-defining the technical parameters of our online experience’.

Hear what others are saying and be inspired by their experiences at SXSW… on twitter.com, YouTube, flickr.com or www.ubervu.com.