It’s that time of year again. Ernst & Young has pared down its Greater LA Entrepreneur of the Year competition to a worthy group of semi-finalists. Finalists will be announced May 13 and a gala presentation held June 18 at the Beverly Hilton, hosted by FOX 11 news anchor Christine Devine.

“We typically have between 18-21 finalists and six or seven awards categories by industry,” Greater LA program manager Ashley Evans tells FishbowlLA. “The categories aren’t announced until the gala and are determined by our independent judging panel.”

From there, LA and other USA regional winners will convene in Palm Springs in November for the EY National Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, typically hosted by Jay Leno. One lucky U.S. winner will continue on to the World Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in June 2014.

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Although the two URLs don’t make this clear, brand new websites samktla.com and richontech.tv were cut from the same coding cloth: Virb. The company, founded in 2010, was just acquired by Culver City-based Web hosting and cloud services provider Media Temple.

As part of last Wednesday’s Critics’ Choice Awards pre-party at 41 Ocean Club in Santa Monica, Rubin hosted a Virb “DIY Build-a-thon.” A company rep told FishbowlLA that approximate 20 media folks in attendance took a demo of the super-easy-to-use platform. Media Temple/Virb staffers were also present at the next day’s awards ceremony, showing more BFCA members what their technology can do.

“This deal signifies our mutual mission to help small businesses, entrepreneurs and other creatives build and host great ideas,” said Media Temple founder and CEO Demian Sellfors via the official deal announcement. “We see a growing trend of celebrities, critics and creative professionals building their own websites to better establish their own individual brands or companies.”

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