Just as its new overlord, Boris Johnson, was moving into City Hall, Transport for London has been given an honour for work undertaken by his predecessor: the award for best government website.

Transport for London's site - best known for its 'journey planner', which guides Londoners to and from destinations in the city - beat off strong competition from San Francisco's new airport to be awarded the People's Choice at this year's Webby Awards - the self-styled 'Oscars of the internet'.

Among the other British winners of the influential awards - now in their 12th year - were the BBC, which won the people's choice for best news, Moo.com, a site that lets users print personalised messages and photographs on business cards, and Zopa.com, where visitors are able to borrow money from 'mom and pop' lenders.

"Obviously we're rather pleased," a TfL spokesman said today. "We think we've designed a site which is interactive, but also well-designed and creative. People these days expect information when they want it, in nice digestible chunks."

The Webbys, chosen by the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences - a panel of 550 leaders in business as well as the web and design fields, including Richard Branson - handed out awards to sites in 119 categories, including news, radio, blog, science, music, and visual design.

TfL's prize was a People's Choice award, but several UK sites also won awards chosen by the Academy itself, including Me and My Bod, a site affiliated with the Asian-themed eatery Wagamama, for best restaurant, and a Radio 1 site called Meet the DJs, for best music.

A design agency based in Cossington, Leicestershire - Checkland Kindleysides - won the highly prized award for best visual design. Jeff Kindleysides, one of the company's directors, said he thought his company's site had triumphed because of its simplicity. "It's easy on the eye, it's calm, and in fact there's actually something quite addictive about it," he told Times Online.

Elsewhere - The New York Times won the awards for best news and best newspaper, the Onion, the satirical news site won best humour, Flickr, the photo-sharing site won best community, and National Geographic won best magazine.

In the hotly contested blogging category - now divided into three, Post Secret - which encourages visitors to make startling but anonymous confessions, won best personal blog, while the Huffington Post, the influential Washington blog, won best political blog, and the FT's Alphaville took the award for best business blog.

The best social networking site - won last year by LinkedIn - went to Flock, a 'social web browser' that aims to make the experience of browsing the web more personal by allowing users to bookmark pages and draw on recommendations from networking sites such as Facebook.

The full list of winners is on the Webby Awards site.

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