What’s great about the Webbys is that everyone is limited to five words in their acceptance speeches. No exceptions. Here are some of my favorites from this year’s event:

“Wait, we didn’t charge anything?” – Trent Reznor, Webby Artist of the Year

“Thank God Conan got promoted.” – Jimmy Fallon, Webby Person of the Year

“Can everyone get closer together.” – Flickr, community award

“Shinehart Wig Company thanks you.” – NBC.com Full Episode Player, broadband award

“Dude we got an A.” – Edutopia, education award

“I didn’t kill newspapers, ok?” – The Huffington Post, politics & blog award

“Robot sharks with lasers in space.” – Wired.com, science award

“Airna, will you marry me?” – Volkswagen Innovations, banner ad campaign award

“Read a freakin newspaper please.” – Detroit Free Press, sports video award

This map shows recreational activites available in Rome and Northwest Georgia

Some of the winners were announced recently in the Georgia Press Association Better Newspaper Contest, and yours truly was involved in a couple winning entries. The Rome News-Tribune, where I am Web editor, competes in division B, for papers with daily circulation of 15,000 – 40,000.

I won an individual award, placing third for best online news project. They haven’t announced yet which project won, but I’m thinking it’s either a page of local candidate information from the November general election, an interactive map of attractions and recreation in Northwest Georgia, or a special site I made to house all our coverage of the 2008 Coosa Valley Fair.

Obviously, I’m really proud of this individual award, but I’m prouder of the first place award for a project I was in charge of. Our paper’s staff came in first in the Best Photo Gallery on a Newspaper Web site category.

The gallery was a collection of pictures from the first day of school here – every single school was represented. I was in charge of planning and implementing the gallery.

I had myself, two interns and three photographers available to hit every school. Before the day, I divided the county up into zones, and planned routes for everyone to get the schools in their zones. Most of us had 4-5 schools to photograph.

As the photos were turned in, I worked on the gallery. To present the photos, I chose the Simpleviewer flash gallery program. It’s free, and allowed me to use XML to post captions with each picture. One of my colleagues, education reporter Elizabeth Cady, even contributed her handwriting to be the header of the page.

This thing took HOURS to complete, and I’m so proud it was not only recognized, it was recognized as the top gallery that was entered.

There were, however several things I liked about this year’s award show. In no particular order, they are:

1. Ricky Gervais. The British actor won for his work in “Extras” last year and wasn’t at the ceremony to accept his award, so presenters Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “gave” it to Steve Carrell. This year, Gervais repeatedly appealed to Carrell to return the award, saying “I bet you haven’t even seen ‘Ghost Town.’ I sat through ‘Evan Almighty’; give me my Emmy.” Will the Academy please hire Gervais to host next year?

2. Fashion of the over-40 crowd. Until I looked her up on IMDB, I had no idea Jean Smart, at 57, is only a year younger than my mom. She looked frakkin unbelievable in a long, sparkly black dress topped with a layer of sheer black fabric. Also looking gorgeous were Felicity Huffman (45), Mariska Hargitay (44), Laura Linney (44), Kyra Sedgwick (43) and Julia Louis Dreyfus (47).

3. Josh Groban. Yes, a lot of people think it was weird and a fail, but I was super impressed by his vocal impressions. Plus, he did the ‘Fresh Prince’ theme song — only the best TV intro ever.

4. Bryan Cranston finally won. The “Breaking Bad” star never took home an Emmy for his amazing work on “Malcolm in the Middle,” and I don’t think anyone was more surprised than he was when his named was called for Best Actor in a Drama. I would have been thrilled had the Emmy gone to Hugh Laurie of “House,” and wouldn’t have been surprised had James Spader or Jon Hamm. But how nice was it to see Bryan Cranston finally get his time to shine?

And just for fun, here are some things I hated.

1. The painful, stilted, awkward, just plain un-funny banter between hosts Jeff Probst, Heidi Klum, Ryan Seacrest, Howie Mandel and Tom Bergeron made an already bland ceremony 10 times worse.

2. Neil Patrick Harris loses. I like Jeremy Piven. He’s great in ‘Entourage.’ But again? Neil Patrick Harris is amazing as Barney Stinson on “How I Met Your Mother,” and he did some of his best work this season. It’s the role of his career, and I was really hoping he would be recognized by the academy.

3. David Boreanaz/Lauren Conrad. I love me some Agent Seely Booth (and I guess L.C. is okay) but who thought to put these two together? Both were stiff and uncomfortable-looking, and couldn’t you just see the life go out of him when she chided him for taking her line?