Houston Web Awards, Tonight — Congrats to the Winners!

Niiiice. Y’know, what with this whole “Web” thing finally looking like it’s not going away within the next year, it’s good to see somebody like the {Houston Press} stepping up to recognize the leading lights of the H-town-based Interwebs.

That’s exactly what they’re doing with the first-ever 2011 Houston Web Awards, which is basically a wide, wide, wide-ranging attempt to honor folks who creatively & awesomely use the Internet to make the city a cooler place to live, whether that’s by blogging, tweeting, promoting, picture-taking, or whatever the hell else.

HP‘s Craig Hlavaty went online today to announce the winners — check out the full list/writeup over here — and it’s a damn fine list, one I read through nodding excitedly and giving thumbs-ups to the monitor (yes, I know; I yell at the TV, too).

In particular, I’m pleased as hell to see friend & ridiculously talented writer David Cobb take the “Best Houston Music Blog” honors for his site, {Houston Calling}, which (as the writeup points out, actually) yours truly reads every damn day. David is a great writer, somehow manages to find out about/write about stuff I’ve never heard of ’til after the fact, and makes it all look easy. Congrats, man; you deserve it.

While I’m not a big Twitter user & don’t know a lot of the folks mentioned, there are some other names I know & recognize on the list; deserving winners, all:

• The Save KTRU site, which is/was at least partly run by long-ago SCR contributor Conor Prischmann (from his home out in the Bay Area, ironically); Save KTRU took the “Best Local Activism Site” award.
  

• For “Best Start-Up Blog,” excellent, insanely useful clearinghouse site Do713.com took the honors — kudos to the tireless work of Philip Beck, Matthew Wettergreen, & our own Robin Babb for that one. The site’s become my go-to place to see what the hell’s going on in this city on any given day, and they always find stuff that makes me smack myself on the forehead and yell, “how did I miss that?”
  

• Swamplot wins the “Best Real Estate Blog,” which seems almost like a no-brainer, since the site pretty much invented that particular category. Seriously, I read this site more than I should.
  

• Moon Tower Inn, to which I am a recent convert (as of Summerfest, that is) won for “Best Use of Facebook by a Restaurant” — although I will say that I wish they had their menu up there, so I could show the wife what all they have…
  

• In the “Best Use of Facebook by a Band or Musician” category, the winners are awesome, awesome (and really, really nice, too) rocker dudes the last place you look, a win I completely agree with, esp. after fighting to find any info online about a handful of other Houston bands recently. These guys know how to do it right.
  

• Andrew Karnavas of {Runaway Sun} won in the “Best Use of Twitter to Promote a Personal Brand” category for managing to promote RS, other band Bang Bang Boom, his solo stuff, and his AndyRoo children’s music project all from his @andrewkarnavas feed (not to mention separate feeds for each of those projects). I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have no idea how he does that. Twitter is still like black magic to me, y’all…
  

• And on a heartwarming note, the award for “Best Blog Post of the Year” goes to The Bloggess, for her gift-cards-for-the-needy thing that ballooned far, far beyond what she’d originally hoped/intended. Sometimes people make the world seem like an okay place after all, even to a diehard pessimist like me. (Now, for an embarrassing admission: I really, truly didn’t realize the lady/blog was from here. Dang…)

Other cool stuff? I’d honestly missed both KPRC‘s Owen Conflenti flipping somebody the bird live on the air and the reportedly Heat-like downtown bank robbery captured by guerrilla journalist Kyle Nielsen. Wow.

Virtual high-fives all around, people. And hey, if you want to celebrate live and in-person with the winners, the awards show is tonight, Thurs., June 30th, at Momentum Audi on Richmond (the hell?), from 7-10PM. {Fat Tony} performs, which makes the thing worth it right there, so get your tickets & go hang out with Houston’s digital heroes.