Google Chrome scores at SXSW Interactive awards

A music and imagery website that shows off capabilities of Google’s Chrome web browser won top honours at a South By Southwest Interactive festival known for its technology trendsetters.

The Wilderness Downtown was declared Best of Show at an awards ceremony that capped the internet-oriented portion of the festival.

“This was a labour of love for a lot of people,” said Radical Media music video director Chris Milk, who has worked with artists such as U2, Green Day, Courtney Love and Arcade Fire. “It would not have been possible without Google.”

TheWildernessDowntown.com combines rich and smooth image streaming capabilities of HTML5 video coding technology in Chrome with music by Grammy-winning Arcade Fire to create an “interactive film”.

“The Wilderness Downtown is meant to be a new type of video,” Google’s Thomas Gayno said after the award ceremony.

“For Google it is very compelling because it allows us to push the browser to its limits and move the web forward.”

Visitors to the website enter addresses where they lived while growing up, to be taken on nostalgic trips by weaving Google Maps and Street View images with the song We Used to Wait.

“It takes you on a wonderful journey, all synchronised with music,” Mr Gayno said. “It is like choreography of browser windows.”

US internet coupon deals website Groupon was voted winner of a People’s Choice award in keeping with a trend of SXSW goers using smartphones to connect with friends, deals and happenings in the real world.

Founded in 2008, Chicago-based Groupon offers discounts to its members on retail goods and services, offering one localised deal a day.

A group text messaging service aptly named GroupMe was crowned the “Breakout Digital Trend” at SXSW.

Start-ups that let friends join in group text message conversations were hot properties with SXSW goers eager to swap discoveries, news, opinions and party venues with circles of friends.

In the weeks before SXSW kicked off, GroupMe added location and picture sharing and made it possible for users to send conversation invitations to friends at social networking hotspots Facebook and Twitter.

Longtime language teaching firm Rosetta Stone was declared best education resource for its Version 4 Totale system, while satirical publication The Onion won a “classic” category devoted to projects launched before January 2010.

California start-up ifixit.com, born of one man’s frustration at not being able to repair his own computer, was awarded top honours in a community category.