• Reuters, Tuesday, March 20, 2007 10:30 AM

With relatively little fanfare, YouTube announced Monday it would be host the first annual awards for the best user-generated videos of 2006. Voting for next week's awards started this week and ends Friday, trophies will be handed out on March 26.

To vote, users browse through and rank videos in seven genres, including most creative, most inspirational and best series, comedy, music or commentary, and the "most adorable video ever," which seeks to find the absolute cutest of the myriad so-cute-it-hurts clips of sleeping puppies and kittens that pervade the video site.

Among the more noted nominees are Lonely Girl 15, 80-year-old British pensioner, Geriatric 1927, folk singer Terra Naomi, "Star Trek" parody Chad Vade, and comic commentator Lisa Nova, who was recently cast by the popular Fox TV comedy show "MadTV." But Reuters says one video award category was conspicuous by its absence: "Best Professionally Produced Copyrighted Video."

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