Chocolate Rain, food fights and earthly greetings translated into 2008 Webby Award nominations this morning for Minnesota-based online purveyors.

This year’s nominees for Webbys, dubbed “the Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times (which, coincidentally, has racked up reams of nominations), include:

Tay Zonday’s Chocolate Rain: This YouTube sensation, by University of Minnesota student Adam Bahner — aka Tay Zonday, he of the Darth Vader voice and the Urkel looks – has received more than 18 million views to date on that site alone. The catchy song has spawned countless parodies, the mark of a true viral classic. It’s up, naturally, for best viral video.

Jesse Vig’s geoGreeting: The work of another “U” student, Jesse Vig, geoGreeting lets users send e-mail greetings using letters formed from buildings and other landmarks on a satellite-view map of the world. It’s very clever. It is up for nomination in the odd category of best netart.

Mono’s The Good Food Fight for General Mills: This innovative site, by Minneapolis ad agency Mono, takes the burden of presenting healthy food information online and turns it into a wild game. Once you pick your healthy dish and an on-screen virtual opponent, you can start throwing food around the site using the vittles in images from the recipes and articles. When you get hit by food, it splats against your screen and starts dripping down. This is another winner from the folks who created the viral sensation Monoface, a previous nominee. It’s nominated for best food and beverage website.

Vote for these and other Webby nominees now through May 1 by going to the online ballot at the Webby site. Based on those results, the winners will be announced May 6.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 7:35 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.