Webby TV Nom: Animal Planet

Wild Interactive's silence an evolutionary step back

By TRAVIS F. SMITH

In a twist of irony, the Webby Awards, which honor the finest Internet sites, are still around seven years after first being held in 1997. Meanwhile, many of its honorees are nothing but faded logos on laundry-day T-shirts. This week, I'm going to take a look at the candidates in the television category, as selected by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Vote for your favorite at www.webbyawards.com.

Webby TV Nominee 1: Animal Planet: Future is Wild Interactive
http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/
futureiswild/animals/animals.html

A flash-based exploration of what future birds and bees might look like 50-, 100- and 200-million years in the future. Part of a larger site that ties in with "The Future Is Wild" show, this site as a whole has a clean layout and clear writing style, but failed to really draw me in, possibly because there was no sound associated with the parts of it that I explored.