The final­ists for the 3rd annual WA Web Awards have been announced, and our favourite ColdFusion/Fusebox 4 site, the Perth Inter­na­tional Arts Fes­ti­val, is short-listed in the non-profit cat­e­gory. Read­ers of this blog may recall this site was also a nom­i­nee in the Webby Awards ear­lier this year. Another Clever Starfish site, for pet pho­tog­ra­pher Ken Drake, is also a final­ist in the small busi­ness category.

The com­pe­ti­tion is stiff and the final­ists show a wide range of out­stand­ing work. The judg­ing coor­di­na­tor, who was respon­si­ble for ini­tial check­ing and val­i­da­tion of entries, said that she was impressed and encour­aged by the improve­ment in the qual­ity of entries since last year - which says great things about both the awards and the web indus­try in Perth.

While we’re talk­ing awards, today the nom­i­na­tions opened for another Aus­tralian web site award, the McFar­lane Prize for excel­lence in Aus­tralian Web Design. This is the sec­ond year this prize, named in mem­ory of Aus­tralian author and web pio­neer Nigel McFar­lane, has been run. The judg­ing, by a panel of experts, focuses strongly on acces­si­bil­ity, web stan­dards and usabil­ity as well as design. Any­one can nom­i­nate a site, as long as it was devel­oped in Aus­tralia by an Aus­tralian com­pany, or by Aus­tralian cit­i­zens or per­ma­nent res­i­dents, and there’s no cost involved. Nom­i­na­tions close August 31, and the win­ner is announced at the Web Direc­tions South con­fer­ence at the end of Sep­tem­ber (which I will be attend­ing, naturally).