Public polls open for SA Weblog Awards

Organised by www.cherryflava.com and Your Group of Web AddiCTs, the blogs are competing in 15 different categories, including: Weblog of the Year, Best Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual/Trans-gender (GLBT) Blog, Best South African Podcast and Best Blog Post of the Year.

The total list of prizes so far include:

• South African Weblog of the Year: Apple MacBook Pro courtesy of www.storm.co.za.
  
• South African Weblog of the Year and the two runners up: A copy of Arthur Goldstuck’s book Internet Access in South Africa 2007 - valued at R75.00.
  
• Best Writing on a South African Blog: Copy of Arthur Goldstruck’s book The ghost that closed down the town and a R200 Kalahari gift voucher sponsored by Cooksister.
  
• Best GLBT blog, Best SA Photographic Blog, Best SA Podcast and Best Food Blog: A t-shirt from eSquared (www.e2fashion.co.za).
  
• Best GLBT Blog and Best SA Blog about Politics: a copy of tertia.org’s book So Close.

The awards have already been through one round of public nominations which were edited down by a pre-selected panel. Elected for no other reason than their passion for the subject, the judges were Rich...!, The Muso, Wayne Wides, Mike Stopforth, Martin, Peas, Coda, Craig Jamieson, Aquila, Rox, Scott Grey, Matthew Buckland, Dave Duarte, Rafiq Phillips, Cherryflava, and Victoire. None were given the choice to vote in a category in which their own blogs were nominated.

The panel reviewed every nomination and filtered the entries down by considering the number of nominations a particular blog received, whether the blog was appropriately categorised, whether the blog was in fact active during 2006, the frequency of posting, post quality and the level of interaction the site enjoys from its readers.

In some instances, there were not enough sites which met the criteria to fill all 10 places within a category, in which case, fewer than 10 blogs made it through to the finals.

Review of and voting for this year’s awards can be done at http://2007.sablogawards.com.

A public poll for the best SA Weblog logo design in the unofficial competition being run by Quirk, which has an Apple TV up for grabs, is now available on Muti at www.muti.co.za/sablogs. Voting is open until the end of this week and the winner will be announced on Monday, 12 March 2007.