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(CNN) -- The winners of the 2012 Webby Awards were announced on Tuesday,

Established in 1996, the Webby Awards are arguably the Internet's best-known honors. After starting small, the Webbys now hand out more than 100 awards each year.

Many of each year's honorees tend to be celebrities, big companies or well-known online entities. Among this year's big winners are Pinterest (best social media app), photo-sharing app Instagram (breakout of the year), and the comedian Louis C.K., honored by the Webbys for creating "a new precedent for distribution" by releasing his comedy special through his own website.

A raft of advertising and corporate website awards have also been added over the years.

But the Internet being the Internet, there will always be lesser-known, innovative and downright quirky winners as well. Here's a look at five Webby Award winners we think are worth a closer look.

Draw A Stickman (Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics)

Are you frustrated that your masterpieces on "Draw Something" can't come to life? Or maybe you're just nostalgic for "Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings," the '70s animated feature in which the things Simon draws come true?

Worry no more. "Draw a Stickman" is here to help.

Available both as a website and a mobile app, the premise is simple. Draw a stick figure, or a more fleshed-out character if you have the drawing chops.

Then click "play" on one of two episodes currently available and watch your drawing get animated through an adventure that will require you to help him, or her, along by drawing new items such as a key needed to unlock a box. When you're done, you can share the results via social media, browse a gallery of other users' drawings or even buy a T-shirt with your drawing on it.

Counterspill (Activism website)

Winner of judges' and People's Choice Webbys, Counterspill is a nonprofit site devoted to reporting information about natural disasters involving oil, coal and other energy companies.

The site's scope is impressive. Not only does it track such recent events as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant, but it also documents historical events dating all the way back to the 1940s.

The site unabashedly has a political slant. It aims to counteract what it calls spin by energy companies and governments in the wake of disasters. (The companies and government agencies involved in disasters are deemed "culprits.")

Among the site's partners is Chris Paine, director of the acclaimed documentaries "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and "Revenge of the Electric Car."

Clouds 365 Project (Personal Blog)

For artist Kelly DeLay, it started in 2009 as a personal challenge: Shoot a still image or video of clouds for 365 consecutive days as a way to ensure he did something creative every day.

"I wanted this practice of observation to be tied into the fabric of my life -- the habit of looking up and noticing the patterns and beauty of the clouds that envelop us every single day," he wrote.

Three years and more than 1,000 images later, he's still going. His site has become not just a beautiful gallery (it's astounding how each day's formation looks different from the last) but a reminder to us all to tap into the creative spirit when we can.

(CNN) -- Instagram has had a big, big, big last couple of weeks: Its Android app dropped at the beginning of April, and Facebook recently acquired the photo-sharing service for a whopping $1 billion.

The result of all this attention? A flood of new users, swelling Instagram's user count up to 50 million.

So what does this mean for the fate of everyone's favorite photo app? It's probably going to get a whole lot more annoying.

Yup, those salad days are about to end, folks. That glorious period in which Walden-filtered snaps of Walden Pond mingled with Earlybird-tinged mountainsides and cats made classic with a dash of 1977-bred nostalgia. The end is nigh, we say!


Steel yourself: We're about to see an influx of photo-happy parents, drunken college kids and, horror of horrors, even more pheromone-crazed teens with accounts entirely dedicated to prepubescent boy bands.

Instagram's passionate users wary of Facebook takeover

In preparation for the onslaught, we're asking you, dear readers, to take stock of your own Instagrammed souls. Dig deep and evaluate how you can help stave off the horror that is blurry shots of food-caked children and one's sparkly manicure.

We're all guilty of Inane-gramming (verb: To thoughtlessly snap and share snaps with no regard for our followers' feelings), and while it's your inalienable right to share and share alike, you can probably agree that at least one in five of the transgressions below should be quashed.

Translation: Don't do these:

1). Myspacing all over the place

We get it, Instagram is supposed to be a photo feed depicting your life and all the many interesting factions of it (I knit! I canoe! I collect severed heads in my freezer! Call the cops!). A self-snap is, consequently, totally OK once in a while -- especially if you just got a new haircut/tattoo/head for your collection (seriously, your phone isn't just a camera -- call the cops). However, don't you have any, I don't know, friends? If not, you're not going to make any pouting into the camera, your mien made even more morose via the Inkwell filter.

(CNN) -- Maybe it seems like the fastest way for a gadget-and-technology blogger to commit career suicide, but Paul Miller gave up the Internet at midnight Tuesday.

Miller, who was and still is a senior editor at a tech news site called The Verge, plans to stay offline for a full year. When he needs to post something to the website that employs him, he will hand his editors a thumb drive with his stories saved in offline files. If he needs to look up a phone number, he'll get on the phone and start calling people -- who hopefully know people who know the person that he's trying to reach for an interview. There's no other way without access to professional websites and directories, he said.

"I'm going to try to use the six degrees of separation a little bit," he said on Tuesday afternoon in an interview -- by phone, of course. "I have a lot of co-workers and they know a lot of people and so anybody I can get a phone number for I'll call that person and maybe they have a phone number for another person. So I'll have to follow that sort of chain."

Why go to all this trouble? For years, the idea of a digital sabbatical has appealed to the hyper-connected set -- people who spend most of their days in front of computer screens, checking blogs, reading Twitter and somehow trying to figure out how to get their work done in between. At the office, they dodge dozens of click-me-now messages per minute, each demanding instant attention.

Even away from work, phones chime and vibrate to the point that, according to a market research study from Martin Lindstrom, the buzz of a vibrating phone is now one of the top three "most powerful, affecting sounds" -- after a baby giggling and the Intel chime, he wrote in The New York Times.

Depending on your perspective, it may be either surprising or fitting that a technology blogger would get so caught up in the online tornado that he would quit, completely, and for a full year.

On one hand, the Internet is Miller's passion and livelihood.

"I love the Internet," he said. "It allows people to interact in really deep and meaningful ways and to create awesome things and do awesome things. I think it's a wonderful invention and I have no ill will against it."

But on the other hand, he also was semi-required to be online almost all the time. "I've been on the Internet for the majority of the hours of my waking life," he says in a video posted on The Verge. Over the years, that started to take its toll. Longer-term, big-brainpower projects, like a sci-fi novel he's writing, fell to the wayside of quicker, easier distractions, he said.

(CNN) -- On average, 18 people in the United States die each day waiting for an organ transplant.

Billionaire Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to change that. He announced Tuesday that the social networking site wants to "help solve the crisis" by allowing users to volunteer as potential organ donors in the United States and the United Kingdom.

"We think that a lot of people who might just be on the fence about whether or not they want to do this, could be convinced to do that," Zuckerberg told ABC News.

He described widespread acceptance of organ donation as "a shift in society that will probably take a while to fully take hold" until more Facebook users start sharing their experiences.

"But I think that if people choose to share these stories with their friends, that can make a big difference over time."

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen: Each donor can save seven lives
Facebook and organ donation status
Facebook and organ donation status

More than 114,000 people in the United States are awaiting organ donations, 79 people on an average day receive a transplant while 18 die, according to Organdonor.gov. The site says more than 100 million people in the U.S. are registered donors.

"We could save thousands more lives a year if we had another 20, 30, 40 million more people registered," said David Fleming, president and CEO of Donate Life America, which is partnering with Facebook in this effort.

The Facebook tool works like this: Users go to their timelines, where under Life Event they will see a health and wellness section. Zuckerberg said: "You put in, 'I decided to be an organ donor' and your state or country you live in and you can add a story about how you decided to be an organ donor."

More than 10,000 people in the United Kingdom need a transplant, according to the website for NHS Blood and Transplant.

A Facebook user will also see a Share Your Donor Status link when a friend's donor update hits their news feed.

The Facebook page also includes links to Donate Life America for people to become official donors. Going through an online state registry or indicating you want to be a donor when you get your driver's license means signing a legal agreement, unlike the Facebook pledge.

"The Facebook partnership is an opportunity for people to share decisions," Fleming said. "The most important part of this is actually registering to be a donor so that your wishes can be carried out. Sharing that decision through Facebook is an opportunity to encourage your friends and family to also register."

People have shared their desire to donate their organs on Facebook before, and others have talked about their need for a transplant, but the idea isn't to match these people, Fleming said.

(Ars Technica) -- Buying a home video game console may soon become a lot more like buying a cell phone, according to a new report suggesting Microsoft is planning to offer a subsidized, $99 bundle including a 4GB Xbox 360 and Kinect sensor to anyone who commits to two years of a new, $15 monthly online service package.

According to a report from The Verge, which cites unnamed sources, the new subsidized bundle will be available "as early as next week" in Microsoft's retail stores. The $15 monthly subscription would reportedly include all the online game play features of a current Xbox Live Gold subscription, alongside unspecified additional content from cable or live sports video providers.

Such a new content plan could help position the Xbox much more directly as a full-service living room entertainment center, rather than primarily as a video game system. That's a transition Microsoft has been signaling for years with its slow accumulation of online entertainment apps, and one that seems somewhat natural given that entertainment apps are already more popular than online gaming on the Xbox 360. The report also fits with a recent leak that suggested Microsoft would be rolling out a "strategy to further monetize (the) Xbox subscriber base" in time for the holiday season.


The total two-year cost for the subsidized bundle as described comes in at $459, compared to the $418 Microsoft currently charges for a 4GB Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle ($299) and two years of Xbox Live Gold ($59/year). Whether that extra cost would be worthwhile depends largely on the precise features Microsoft offers for the new monthly subscribers, and how comfortable consumers are with being essentially locked to their game system for a two-year period (Microsoft would reportedly mimic cell phone providers in charging an early termination fee to those who decide to drop out before the term is up).

(CNN) -- A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" reveals important details about the setting and gameplay options for the latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series.

The clip was posted online Tuesday night and has already attracted 1.4 million views on YouTube. It features a near-future scenario in which the U.S. military has developed technology that puts unmanned vehicles and robots on the front lines of battle. An enemy gains access to that technology and turns it against cities all over the world.

Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" will be released November 18. Its predecessor, 2010's "Call of Duty: Black Ops," is the best-selling video game ever in the United States, according to some estimates.

Mark Lamia, Treyarch studio head, said his developers did a lot of research to set the game in a plausible future. He said for its single-player campaign, the game will feature multiple plotlines and nonlinear gameplay in which a player's actions affect how the story unfolds.

Gameplay in the video shows a bombed-out Los Angeles, urban combat through city streets and ... horseback chases through the desert. It appears to mix futuristic, sci-fi themes with present-day elements.

Lamia also confirmed that zombies are returning to the game. "Our biggest, most ambitious zombies ever," he said.

He would not reveal anything about the game's multiplayer action. Lamia said more information on that will be released later.

The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the Internet. Some joked about whether Treyarch was making Anonymous, the real-life hacker group dedicated to promoting free flow of information, the game's main villain.

How did we get here?

Ten candidates took part in the first round on April 22. With all votes counted on Monday, Francois Hollande had 28.63% support, followed by Sarkozy at 27.18%. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen garnered 17.9% of the vote, while Jean-Luc Melenchon on the extreme left had 11.11% and centrist Francois Bayrou had 9.13%. If no one candidate scored an outright majority, the two top went through to a run-off, to be held on May 6.

What are the main issues in the election?

The economy, economy, economy. Basically, for months now the top issues have been unemployment and purchasing power. To a lesser extent -- and for some candidates, a greater extent -- immigration figures in the debate. On the extremes -- both left and right -- Europe has been an issue that relates to the economic problems. With neither candidate close to a majority, who assumes the presidency hinges on what support Sarkozy or Hollande can get from those who didn't back them in the first round.

Who is expected to win?

The polls at the moment give Hollande a lead of between 6% and 8% in the second round. The first-round results appear to be historic, and a bad sign for Sarkozy. Several high-profile Hollande supporters told CNN that a French president running for re-election has never failed to place first in the first round of the vote.

When will we know the result?

We'll know on the evening of Sunday May 6. France has a fairly accurate system of exit polling that permits the news media to call the election at the moment the polls close at 8 p.m. local time. But these are exit polls and if the race turns out to be close, the media has been known in the past to start slipping into the French conditional tense, ie. "the winner might be..."!

How much interest is there in France in the election?

That depends entirely on how much of a political junkie one is. In many ways this is one of the most interesting races in decades: a sitting president fighting for his political life is the underdog, while extremist candidates at both ends of the spectrum collected almost 30% of all the votes cast in the first round.

The issues have been thoroughly debated and one reason the extremists did so well is that voters did not perceived clear distinctions between the programs of Sarkozy and Hollande, even if the two main candidates worked hard to make their differences clear.

What implications are there for the rest of Europe?

France and Germany have been at the heart of the drive to keep the European single currency sound and Europe on course. Both Sarkozy and Hollande are committed Europeans, but if either courts the extremists at either end of the spectrum for help in winning the second round, then all bets are off.

Sarkozy, of the center-right RPR party, has been a significant figure on the European and international stages since becoming president in 2007. Under his leadership, France -- one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- has played key roles in international hot spots such as Libya, not to mention during the pan-European debt crisis, but the domestic economy has been a prime focus of the election.

New York (CNN) -- If the Americans followed the French presidential elections as avidly as the French stare at the poll ratings of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, they would know that "Sarko l'Américain," Sarkozy the American, may soon have to say "good bye" to the Elysée Palace.

The omens are bad and the possible demise of the most pro-American president in our history raises questions about our long and complex transatlantic relations.

How will French election be decided?

Not that there is so much to worry about. Sarkozy's potential successor, the Socialist François Hollande, may have said that "the enemy is finance," but he also told the New York Times that before attending l'Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the alma mater of our elite public service, he had traveled to the United States and written a report on the American fast food industry that foresaw the triumph of McDonald's in France a decade later. The candidate even admitted a personal weakness for hamburgers -- a strategic cliché America is welcome to take as a token of transatlantic loyalty.

Philippe Coste

But it is not always enough. Remember Jacques Chirac? Our former president gained real popularity in the U.S. after telling Larry King that in his youth he had worked as a soda jerk at a Howard Johnson hotel, and even dangerously overextended his vacations to date a southern belle who called him "Honey Chile" and drove him around in a white Cadillac convertible. All this sincere devotion to Americana didn't spare him from being reviled later as the commander-in-chief of the "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys", unwilling to risk blood and treasure in the quest of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Tons of "Freedom Fries," the creative rants of Bill O'Reilly and George W. Bush, even the sad visit to the White House in 2004 of our then ambassador to check officially on the status of France ("Friend or Foe?") are enough proof that our relations can become sour and chaotic overnight. But hateful? No. It's just ... complicated.

(CNN) -- Nicolas Sarkozy achieved a rare distinction Sunday, becoming the first French president for more than half a century to lose the first round of an election, a stunning blow for the center-right politician after five years in power.

With the lowest approval ratings of any French president in living memory and trailing in the polls for months, Sarkozy's camp had been pinning their hopes on the pollsters being wrong. But they were not, and he was beaten into second place by Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, although both qualified for the second round presidential run-off on May 6.

Analysts said the large share of the vote for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who took 20% of the vote, could mean problems for Sarkozy. Emmanuel Coste, London correspondent for CNN-affiliate BFMTV, said many dissatisfied voters opted for Le Pen. "Sarkozy had a tough stance on immigration, but maybe it was not tough enough to attract Le Pen voters." Before the election the president had complained about France having too many foreigners and not integrating them properly, and also accused butchers of supplying only halal meat to Parisians.

Sarkozy said he has a "duty to listen" to far-right voters after Sunday's results were announced. "We must respect the voters' will," Sarkozy said Monday, calling the support for Le Pen a "crisis vote."

Le Pen declared Sunday she would say on May 1 what her supporters should do in the run-off, but it remains to be seen how many of those votes Sarkozy will pick up. Coste told CNN Sarkozy may be better advised trying to woo centrist Francois Bayrou, although other analysts suggested that this would also be a difficult task.

"His campaign strengthened the National Front and he will struggle to win back the center," Stephane Rozes, of the CAP political analysis institute, told Agence France-Presse.

Mocked for his lavish lifestyle, and a private life that saw him divorce his second wife immediately after his election in 2007 and go on to marry singer Carla Bruni, the French never truly warmed to Sarkozy. He is often known as "quel q'un qui derange," someone who drives you crazy.

The reason for their mixed feelings about "Sarko" is his apparent desire to ruffle feathers and challenge the established order. His presidency has been in constant motion: the 35-hour week? Sarkozy worked against it. Delay the retirement age beyond 60? Sarkozy achieved it, despite strikes and demonstrations. A bloated public sector? Sarkozy eliminated 160,000 civil service jobs.

None of these reforms was universally popular and some, at least initially, were roundly condemned. But Sarkozy believed them necessary and hoped his countrymen would come round to his way of thinking.

However, as the eurozone crisis swirled, the president received a jolt in January when Standard & Poor's credit ratings agency downgraded France from the maximum Triple A status. Hollande launched a scathing attack on the government's policies, saying: "We are no longer in the first division."

Then came the killings in March of seven people, including three young children, by an Islamic extremist in Toulouse and Montauban. Election campaigning was suspended by most candidates, but as incumbent president, Sarkozy was praised for his handling of the crisis.

Paris (CNN) -- Pollsters had told us that the French were bored by a dull campaign which had seen more personal attacks flying than issues being debated. They were wrong.

The campaign might have been an unusual one but the French flocked to the polling stations from 8 a.m. on Sunday to cast their votes. Long queues formed outside some of Paris's 869 schools turned "bureaux de vote" and it was clear from midday that the turnout was going to be massive. More than 80% of the 44 million strong electorate went out to vote, only slightly less than in 2007, and certainly more than in 2002.

Ten years ago, a 28% abstention level was blamed for the surprising result of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen who managed to scrape through to the second round of the elections, shocking France and the world.

Agnes Poirier

On Sunday, the mood at Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party headquarters on Paris's Left Bank was certainly not as buoyant as the one building up through the afternoon at the Socialist Party HQ of presidential challenger Francois Hollande. As the day went on, it looked increasingly clear that Hollande had done well, and was leading in the exit polls. With about 75% of votes counted by late Sunday, Hollande had 27.9% support, followed by Sarkozy at 26.7%.

The surprises came with the results of the three other candidates, hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, centrist François Bayrou and extreme-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen. Always underestimated by pollsters, the National Front vote in fact exceeded its 2002 historical record, with 19.3% of the votes. Le Pen's successful night meant 6.2 million people voted for her.

Mélenchon, leader of the Left Front, at one point in the campaign credited with 15% of the votes, has failed in his mission to overtake Le Pen. The Mélenchon effect turned out to be a soufflé, but one that eventually went flat: 10.8% is not a bad score for someone who started the campaign with only 5% in the polls but it is still a disappointment considering the élan he had managed to create. Mélenchon was hoping to become the third man of the race and represent the working classes in front of Le Pen, but this did not happen.


Centrist Bayrou, who, back in 2007, reached 18% of the votes, also failed to make a mark, with only 9.8% of the votes this time. It looks obvious that many French voters, who might have been tempted by a Mélenchon or Bayrou vote, opted for tactical voting, anticipating the second round battle. Hollande did need some momentum behind him; he now has it.