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Today, Afilias announced the results of its 2009 .INFO Awards program which rewards the best .INFO Web sites around the globe. First place was awarded to thueringen.info, a travel information portal in the Thuringia area of Germany. Second place was awarded to gps-tour.info, a peer to peer file sharing service where people, tourist regions or organizations can share and download outdoor GPS tours. Third place was awarded to turkel.info, a travel and tourism marketing agency in the United States.

".INFO has proven itself as a useful and vibrant top-level domain with millions of great Web sites," said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Afilias. "Our 2009 award winners embrace the global need for sharing information on a domain that is intuitive and makes information easy to find. These unique characteristics are what make .INFO an attractive address and ultimately makes .INFO Web sites successful."

The 2009 .INFO Awards garnered more than 50 entries from 18 countries. .INFO site owners were able to submit their site for consideration from October 7 — 23, 2009. A short list of the top 10 sites selected by a panel of judges was opened for public vote on November 2. The 2009 panel of judges included: Dominik Grollman — Editor in Chief of Internet World Business (Germany), Peter Prestipino - Editor in Chief of Website Magazine , Gautam Chatur — Senior Director at Qorvis Communications , Michael Stephanblome — Managing Director AdJug UK , Katy Tafoya — Editor ConstantChatter.com , and Philipp Grabensee — Chairman of the Afilias Board of Directors. Public voting closed on November 6. Winners were selected by combining the scores of the panel of judges with votes from the public.

"As a judge, I was impressed with the broad range of information presented in the candidate sites," said Afilias' Board of Directors Chairman and .INFO Awards judge, Philipp Grabensee. "Afilias' .INFO is truly a preferred address for those wishing to get their information out in a memorable manner."

Prizes for the .INFO awards are allocated as: US$7,500 for the winner, US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place. More information on the .INFO Awards program can be found at http://www.info-award.info

About .INFO

.INFO was the first generic, unrestricted Top-Level Domain (TLD) to be launched since .com and is the most successful new TLD launched in over 25 years. Registrations in .INFO first became available in 2001. Since then, .INFO has grown to become the fourth largest generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) in the world with over 6 million domain names registered. .INFO Domains are currently available in ten Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) scripts. (Learn More)

Related topics: Domain Names, Registry Services, Top-Level Domains, Web