Hear the Brookes Talk web browser read a page on Louis Braille

Six of the eight medallists in the 26th year of the BCS awards had conceived Internet-related projects, including two of the three overall winners drawn from the final eight.

"The awards have mirrored very much technology developments and now we're into Web-based activities, that's the exciting thing that people are looking at these days," said Tim Southern, one of the organisers.

"If you go back say to 1980, ICL's Content-Addressable File Store, a very effective way at getting at data, won an award. A few years ago, data warehousing was a very interesting topic and awards were won there.

" But the pressure now is on people to innovate through the Internet, that is the technology du jour."

The world's biggest computing course

There were three winners and one medallist specially commended:

• HM Land Registry won for its conveyancing pilot project aimed at realising a National Land Information System. It should improve conveyancing for all. Twelve bodies including the Law Society, Ordnance Survey, the Land Registry and Valuation Office collaborated. The scheme was judged as innovative in integrating data from private and public sector sources and in the way it provided Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data over the Internet.

• The Open University was a winner for its course on Object-Oriented Computing. M206 is the largest computing course in the world with more than 5,000 students in Western Europe. It has a specially designed learning environment which uses CD ROMs, television, the Web and video conferencing.

• DOORS, a cross-platform tool for storing and managing project information, was selected for its ability to focus on managing complex information and its interdependencies and for the way it simplified information management.

• The Defence Medical Services Telemedicine System received a special commendation. It integrates digital cameras, image manipulation, satellite telephony, e-mail and videoconferencing. Images of wounds, radiographs and microscope slides are sent back from field hospitals abroad for specialists in the UK to analyse and return an electronic diagnosis.

The talking Web browser

• The Brookestalk web navigator was one of the four other medallists. Developed by Oxford Brookes University, it reads out for the visually impaired the headings, links and text on a Web page. Also incorporated are information retrieval techniques to summarise pages.

• The technology behind Wireplay, the online gaming service from British Telecom, won another medal. BT's Martlesham laboratories have patented a protocol which slashes data overheads and reduces the 400 milli-second timelag usually found over the Internet to 100 milli-seconds. At this faster speed, games no longer stutter.

• The Martlesham labs also won a medal for an Intelligent Personal Assistant. This tracks preferences and habits of workers over time to build up a profile it can use to offer a range of assistance from diary management to finding contacts. The IPA enhances the conventional keyboard and mouse access with vision, speech and natural language capabilities to enable a more human interaction with the system.

• The final medallist was Barclays Endorse, a card which could provide people with the ability to process documents electronically without the need for a hand-written signature. It is currently part of an online trial allowing the self-employed to complete one government form electronically with a digital signature rather than three paper versions for different departments.