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Cafepress.com nominated for coveted Webby Award

Sukhjit Purewal in San Jose

Finally, Mahesh Jain and his cohorts are getting some respect.

Cafepress.com, an e-commerce site co-founded by Jain two years ago, has been nominated to receive a Webby Award.

Webbys recognise the Internet's crème de la crème Web sites. They are, in a way, the Web's Oscars.

"We've always felt neglected," Jain told rediff.com. "We have always felt that people should notice what we've been doing."

Jain said that the company has been overlooked because it has a staff of only 25 people and hasn't raised a lot of capital. What the company lacks in capital, it makes up with in innovation, he said.

Cafepress.com has built a seemingly winning product by providing customers with online stores where they can sell shirts, mugs and mouse pads customised with their own logos and/or slogans.

They take care of all the details including production, shipment and payment with no risk to the customer setting up the store.

ZD Net described Cafepress.com as 'one commerce model that should have the industry applauding'.

Competing against Cafepress.com for the best commerce site are Travelocity.com, gorptravel.com, half.com and mySimon.com.

Several other companies headed by Indians are nominated in other categories. MyCiti.com, Citibank's Web site, is nominated for the best finance site and has Victor Menezes as its CEO. Ramesh Punwani is CFO of Travelocity.

MedBroadcast.com, nominated for best health site, has Riaz Rawji as its CTO. Nominated for best news site for the second year in a row is CNET.com, of which Jai Singh is editor and vice-president.

This year's winners will be announced at the fifth annual awards event on July 18 at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. ABC News' Sam Donaldson will host the live Webcast.

The event has come to take on a mystic of its own much, partly due to event organizers who try to imitate the glamour of Hollywood - albeit in the case of Internet gurus perhaps a weird glamour.

Attendees are encouraged to be daring in their ensemble. This year's theme is 'Technology is the evolution of the mind' and the accompanying dress code is 'gutsy'.

Presenters at last year's show included John Perry Barlow, Tina Brown and actress Sandra Bernhard.

Webbys will be awarded in 27 categories this year including community, commerce, finance, health, travel and the weird. Winners are selected by judges from the International Academy of Digital Media Arts and Sciences.

The awards also always for the public to vote for a winner in the same category as the judges select from, thus coming up with a second winner dubbed the People's Voice Award.

And while there are no guarantees that walking away from the glitzy event with a Webby in hand will lead to a road paved with Internet riches, it is definitely something to be excited about.

Evite.com, co-founded by Selina Tobaccowala, was named best service site last year. However, before the year was up, Evite.com was bought up by Ticketmaster - saving it from eminent demise. Epinions.com, co-founded by Nirav Tolia, was awarded the People's Voice Award in the same category as Evite.com, and is still alive and well.

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