The third edition of the Dot Award received entries from France, Belgium, and the Catalan-speaking areas. From the best sites an International Jury selected the winners and awarded prices for the Best Content, the Best Design and the Best use of ICT tools.

The winners

Best content  : two websites got the Best Content Award

• http://mazemag.fr :  A magazine in French by and for young people

Sixty volunteer editors provide content free of charge and updated monthly, related to news, cinema, fashion, music, literature, art, and video games. The website – which claims 20,000 unique visitors each month – has no particular political policy: all of the editors can freely express their own opinions.The jury rewarded this website with the best content award because of the good, original, and well-organized content.

• http://www.elserpent.cat: A Catalan web about a festival in Manlleu (Barcelona)

Every August 14th in Manlleu (Barcelona) they celebrate a traditional festival, “El Serpent”. Five young students from the INS Antoni Pous i Argila in Manlleu have designed this website to explain their festival and try to interest people in participating.The jury appreciated the pictures, the amount of information provided, and the personal touch from the students.

Best Design : http://maisondescanuts.fr

A website made by 21- to 22-year-old students devoted to the technical, social, and creative influence of the Lyon silk industry over the last 5 centuries.The jury commented on its good design and artistic feel. A good website to promote the museum of the city of Lyon

Best Use of Tools : http://www.lmfamily.cat

This website, made for K-poppers by two 11- to 15-year-old Catalan students, gives a lot of information about various Korean singers and groups. Jury members took into account the youth of the students, the competent use of their chosen tools, and the abundance of pictures and music that make this site very attractive;

Special mention : http://montsiasud.cat

Three students from the IES Sòl de Riu from Alcanar have built a very thorough website about history, culture, cuisine, and the latest news from each of the different towns of the Montsià region, in the south of Catalonia.The jury members decided to give this website an special mention because of its good navigation, architecture, and integration, and its very good content.

Dot Award wants to thank the members of its jury

Competition website:  www.dot-award.eu

Partners

RVO-Society

Named after the first CEO of imec – Roger Van Overstraeten, the RVO-Society promotes technology in education. The Roger Van Overstraeten Society develops educational material on modern scientific and technological developments. Each project follows the latest educational and pedagogical insights.

Afnic

Afnic (French acronym for “Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération”) is the manager of the registry of domain names in the following geographical areas: .fr (France), .re (Reunion Island), .pm (St. Pierre and Miquelon), .tf (French Southern Territories), .wf (Wallis and Futuna), and .yt (Mayotte).

In an Order published in the Official Journal of the French Republic on 28th June 2012, Ms Fleur Pellerin, Junior Minister for the Digital Economy, appointed Afnic as the registry for the .fr TLD for a new five-year term.

Since its inception in 1998, Afnic’s objective has been to help the development of an Internet that is secure and stable, open to innovation, and in which the French Internet community plays a key role.

To do so, its assignments are to excel in providing resilient essential services in the Internet’s core infrastructure in France, develop and share its expertise in order to facilitate transition to the Future Internet.

Fundació puntCAT

The Fundació puntCAT is a private, non-profit, and non-political entity. It was founded on 28^th December 2004. It was born out of civic society; its objective is to manage the .cat domain and help to develop the Information Society in Catalan-speaking areas.

Websalpunt

The  .cat domain, specific to the Catalan-speaking community, also participates in the Dot Award contest  from their local competition Webs al punt .cat, open to students from secondary schools from the Catalan-speaking area (Andorra, Balearic Islands, Catalonia, Southern France, the Valencian country, and the Italian city of Alghero). The organizers of the competition, the .cat registry, consider that nowadays when technology moves so quickly, to be up to date with the latest findings is vital. The Internet is the tool of the present and the future, we can reach the world from our desks and let the rest of the world know what we think as well as learning from others.

The best websites from Webs al punt .cat will represent the .cat domain in the Dot Award, showing the children from the Catalan-speaking area how they can reach the whole world through the Internet.

The project is sponsored with domain names and web space for the participants by Dinahosting and Cdmon.

CENTR

CENTR is the European ccTLD organisation. CENTR brings together the managers of the national Internet domains such as .uk in the United Kingdom, .be in Belgium, and .fr in France. CENTR’s members together are responsible for more than 63 million domain names or roughly 80% of all ccTLDs worldwide.

More on CENTR at www.centr.org.