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Now the public has a voice in whose INFO they like best. Afilias, the registry operator for the .INFO domain, has opened its 2009 .INFO Awards to public voting. Anyone around the world can now vote for their favorite of the top 10 .INFO Web sites selected by a panel of judges.

"The .INFO domain is the global home for anyone with information to share. The submissions for this year's awards program reflect .INFO's global appeal and the inherent usefulness of an Internet domain entirely devoted to information," said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Afilias.

The 2009 program garnered more than 50 entries. The most popular categories for site submissions included special interest Web sites (28 percent), private Web sites (23 percent) and business/corporate Web sites (17 percent).

In addition, interest in the .INFO awards was truly global with submissions being entered from 18 countries. 31 percent of submissions came from Germany, followed by the United States at 19 percent and Russia at 12 percent. Notably, the UK accounted for 6 percent of submissions, while India and France both had 4 percent.

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.

This panel selected the following Web sites as the top 10 submissions:

http://www.turkel.info
http://www.gps-tour.info
http://www.solicitor.info
http://de.med.info
http://www.digitaldruck.info/
http://your-affiliate.info/
http://www.thueringen.info
http://www.zulassungsdienst.info
http://www.westsussex.info
http://www.troop153.info/

Members of the public can vote for their favorite of these top 10 sites at www.info-award.info Public voting will remain open until 11:59 p.m. November 6. Public votes will be combined with the judges scores to select the top three Award winners. Prizes for the awards are allocated as: US$7,500 for the winner, US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place. The winners of the .INFO Awards will be announced on November 9.

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