Bloggie Awards

warning: unusually long post.

I announced a while ago that the nominations for the Bloggie awards were taking place.

There are a ton of categories, and a kabillion options, so I totally understand those of you who went there and just threw your hands up. The finalists have been chosen, though, so it's now been narrowed down. This is a helpful guide to those of you who want to vote. You could even just go there and tick off all my choices. That way, everyone I like will win and I'll be happy, and really, that's what matters, right?

Best Web Application: I think this category is kind of bogus, since depending on how you blog, any of these will have more importance to you. Photographers love Flickr, people who aren't so css/html savvy tend to use Blogger instead of WordPress, etc. So I'm voting YouTube, just based on their huge influence in the blogosphere in the past year (even though I don't use them much myself).

Best Aussie/New Zealand blog: Aussielicious gets my vote - mostly because the other ones bored me or annoyed me. The hot guy pictures didn't hurt. That's a warning for you straight guys who may be offended by hot guy bodies. As a side note for this category: Do NOT click on Holties House. There is embedded music and other slow-ass annoying plug-in stuff that will freeze you up for a bit. That shit belongs on MySpace. Leave it there.

Best Asian blog (not Middle East): Tokyo Girl Down Under it is. I was actually torn in the previous category, but I see that it's a clear choice here, because the other Asian blogs on there are just a mess. Aesthetics count, people. If I don't want to look at the page, I'm not reading it. She's also a good writer.

Best African/Middle East: I had high expectations for this, since I don't read any Middle Eastern or African blogs. My expectations were certainly met. This was a difficult choice and I encourage you to look at them all. The winner has to be the brilliant blog, Raising Yousuf, written by a Palestinian journalist and mother, which interlaces her undeniably entwined personal and political life. Also in this category are blogs by an American family living in Marrakesh, a blog written about daily life post-Saddam in Iraq, a very cool wildlife preserve blog, and a blog written by someone in Dubai. All very good reads, that give you a perspective of these places you can't possibly have without having been there.

Best Euro (not UK/Ireland): Since two of these are food blogs (which are lovely, by the way, but certainly not a proper european blog, to me), it was really between 3 really good ones. Le Blagueur à Paris made me laugh more, so it wins my vote. I have to say, My Boyfriend is a Twat totally could win best blog title though, if there was such a category. Also, she's won twice already.

Best British or Irish: LOVING a beautiful revolution, it's going in the daily reads. One of the other nominees (she won last year) in this category even encourages voting for that one, and if you go there, you will see why. It's fabulous.

Best Latin American: The clear winner here is Bibi's box. It's a blog that links to really interesting artistic stuff. You could spend a very long time clicking around there and seeing some kickass creativity.

Best Canadian: Kill the Goat. She's snarky and honest. I like her.

Best American: Another tough category, all good nominees, all pretty obvious. Also, mostly nominated in other categories. Cute Overload wasn't nominated elsewhere, and you know how I love the cute, right? How can you go wrong with a blog filled with baby animal pictures?

Best Photography: There are so many talented photographers out there. While I think all the nominees are amazing with the lens (a talent which has very blatantly escaped me), Stuck in Customs does things with photography that are surreal and original and lovely. And in case you think, at first glance, that this is all just the brilliance of PhotoShop (which I think is a very necessary tool in this day of digital), scroll down to the portraits. They are stunning.

Best Craft: If you're not the crafty sort, you've probably never heard of any of these. There's some cool talent out there. For me, the winner of this category had to feature stuff I actually liked and it had to really be a craft-centric blog, as opposed to a blog that sometimes had some crafty stuff in it. Design*Sponge wins. Besides, the site itself is lovely to look at (see, Placebo? The 3 column template can totally work).

Best Food: If those other blogs, which were listed as European had been properly placed here, it would have been a harder choice. Since they weren't, 101 Cookbooks is the only site I think really features food the way it should be as a blog. Recipes that are easy to find, sorted properly, with pictures, but not an obnoxious amount of them.

Best Sports: First of all, I have to say that I am unqualified to even vote in this category, but I chose Deadspin. It's less verbose and covers lots of different sports.

Best Music: 3Hive is the only site I'm familiar with in this category. They have consistently good, short synopses of lots of genres of music, and links so you can hear it. It's lovely to navigate, and it just rules. Clicking through to the other nominees didn't impress me enough to even consider someone else.

Best Entertainment: This is the guilty pleasure section, and they all are. They're the reality tv version of blogging. Stuff you don't necessarily want to admit to reading, but you so totally do. Maybe not daily, but still. One of them is even a blog specifically all about a reality show. While I love Project Runway in ways that are unnatural and probably unhealthy, I can't choose this as the best entertainment blog, simply because it only covers that one thing. I must choose Go Fug Yourself, because as far as the ripping of celebrity goes, it at least focuses only on the fashion horror, and I love a good fashion horror. I don't need to know the nitty gritty details of celeb personal lives.

Best Political: If I am going to read a political blog (which I'm not likely to, often), it had better be entertaining. I get enough biased and dry politics from regular news venues, thanks. So, Wonkette wins.

Best Web Development: A yawn category for most of us, the only one that looks like it could be helpful if I wanted to be a real web designer is A List Apart.

Best Computer/Tech: I love gadgets, and Popgadget wins by a slight margin, for its ability to combine gadgetry with other accessory type stuff with a tech theme. Things cannot be all geek, all the time, people.

Best Topical: While I'm sure lots of people will go all politically correct and insist that the breast cancer or tree hugger blogs should win, I can't say I'd like to read about either topic on a daily basis. So, Apartment Therapy gets my vote.

Best GLBT: Another tough choice, because let's face it. Gay men are some of the most entertaining people on the planet. Scott-o-Rama wins my vote because he's new to me, funny, and he helped me to learn that my fine is $505.60.

Best Teen: I was cringing at the thought of these, because my teen years were angst filled, and I'm so very glad I didn't have the option of memorializing that trivial crap on the internet. What I have learned through this voting process? Teens are totally not afraid to write about sex (in explicit detail), their web design sense is much more refined than most adults blogging, and while most haven't learned how to edit themselves to a digestible length just yet, they're really good. Overall, Lylium kicks ass. She has to compete with soft porn, and I really hope that she wins because she's adorable, she writes well, and she has been blogging longer than it's had a name. If I were an angst filled teen again? She'd totally be my friend. Maybe. Oh, and she takes cool pictures, too. I wasn't nearly as cool or smart as I thought I was at 18.

Most Humorous: I'm a little pissed that this category doesn't have different nominees. Most are nominated in other, more fitting categories anyway, and there are so many funny people out there writing. So I'm going with Overheard in NY, even though I would have voted it in a different category.

Best Writing: Again, a lot of good writers getting ignored, while repeat nominees sit in inappropriate categories. I'm beginning to see why clever people have taken weblog kudos into their own hands and created independent awards of their own. For me, a good writer does not need to flex their massive vocabulary in order to exhibit their high intellect. That's already been done. They're called books, and they're fabulous. As books. Not as blogs. Waiter rant is the lone standout of a blog that's well-written, and still a blog (that is not nominated for a different fitting category). I'm happy to give it my vote.

Best Group: Boing Boing - their tagline says it best. A directory of wonderful things.

Best Community: This category really highlights our ADD as a society. The metafilter type sites clearly indicate that we cannot read about just one topic at a time. While I think that Overheard in NY is the best example of what a community blog can be, I have already voted for it under humorous, so in all fairness, I'll go with the best ADD type blog. digg.

Best Designed: The easiest category for me. I didn't have to read a thing. Pure visceral goodness. You know what? I think the teens could have swept this category. French Toast Girl is the best of the bunch. It's simple and clean, with great splashes of color. The rest of the site is done really well, as this is only the journal section of an overall illustrator/watercolorist site. I really like her work, as well.

Best-Kept Secret: To Whom It May Concern is wonderful. Letters that should be written to people or things (singers, directors, the weatherman, overpriced soda, etc) and they are funny and mostly accurate. Another add to the daily reads.

Best New: These are blogs that just started in 2006. Say No To Crack is mindless fun. I like it.

Lifetime Achievement: For me, this is an obvious choice. Dooce is a blogger pretty much everyone is aware of. She writes really well, she's funny, she takes great pictures, and she is brutally honest. These are all attributes I admire, and having your blog's title turned into a verb certainly makes you a prime candidate for lifetime achievement. It's a one-time-only award. I'm just surprised she hasn't won it yet.

Weblog of the Year: I guess this is akin to the Oscars' picture of the year award. Much like in that award process, all of these nominees are accounted for in various other categories. Again, I'm voting Dooce, really just in case she doesn't win Lifetime Achievement.

So, there they are. I'm blogged out. I hope nobody on my regular reads has written anything too interesting today.

Go vote!