About 400 people watched a special showing of the IBM Watson Jeopardy Challenge, Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at the Castle Theater. Watson handily beat the past Jeopardy champions and earned $1 million dollars for charity. (The Pantagraph, David Proeber)
NEW YORK -- The "Jeopardy"-playing IBM computer Watson has been named person of the year by the Webby Awards.
The Webbys, which honor Internet achievement, announced their special honorees Thursday.
The recently disbanded rock group LCD Soundsystem has been chosen artist of the year. The band presented their final concert at Madison Square Garden in a live webcast.
"It Gets Better Project" founder Dan Savage will be honored for special achievement. Savage's online video campaign has urged young people to stand up to bullying against lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender teens.
Director Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, co-founders of the comedy Web site FunnyOrDie, will be honored as film and video person of the year.
Awards will be handed out June 13 at the 15th annual Webby Awards, hosted by Lisa Kudrow.
, author of the sex  '''', has won a  for his work on the . He started the project in 2010 to address a series of incidents of . 

 in 2005 Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, co-edited a book featuring selections from the It Gets Better Project. The book, '''', includes a piece from  Barack Obama – who also filmed a video for the online project. In both the book and the online project itself, individuals submitted contributions with messages of hope and optimism directed towards LGBT teenagers.


In an interview published Thursday with '''', Savage commented on his initial response when contacted by the  to receive a video contribution from the President for the It Gets Better Project: "You could have knocked me over with a feather when the White House called and said the President would record a video. And they not only recorded a video, they were calling ''me'' to let me know and they were giving it to us first to release on the 'It Gets Better' website."

The Webby Award is presented anually by the , for excellence on the Internet. Savage was selected for recognition with a Special Achievement Award for his work on the It Gets Better Project. His project focuses on combatting bullying directed against teenagers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.