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Online voting [2] has begun for the Best of the Blogs Awards from Deutsche Welle, one of the most prestigious international blog competitions with nominated blogs [3] in eleven different languages. You can vote for your favorites until April 14, 2010 [2].
The jury will meet in the middle of April to decide on the winners, and the results will be announced on April 15 during the re:publica [4] conference in Berlin, Germany. The winners will receive their awards at a ceremony during the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum [5] in June 2010 in Bonn.
Among the Nominees
In the “Best Weblog” category, the competition is fierce between well-known blogs from around the web. Jordanian blogger Osama Romoh [6] currently has over 60% of the votes. He blogs about social issues in his country with ironic humor.
In this same category, AJI – Ação de Jovens Indígenas [7] [pt] from Brazil is designed to accommodate young indigenous bloggers of the Dourados Reservation and help them write about problems in their reservation as well as to address national issues, like the status of native populations generally in Brazil.
Another contender of this category is Han Han [8], a prolific novelist and race car driver from China who happens to be China's most read blogger [9] and a contender [10] for Time Magazine's Top 100 list.
Global Voices and The BOBs
Global Voices itself won a BOBs award in 2005 [11], but many of the current and former contributors to this website are featured in this year's BOBs for their activities outside Global Voices.
Among the “Best Blog” nominees is Ushahidi [12], a blog that accompanies a web application that helps map disaster situations via mobile phones and social networking. Global Voices’ former authors Juliana Rotich [13], Ory Okollah [14] helped develop this project, that was initially created to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Recently, Ushahidi maps were deployed [15] in Haiti after the earthquake that devastated [16] the country, as well as [17] after the Chile Earthquake [18].
HerdictWeb [19], a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (where Global Voices was founded) is a nominee in the ‘Reporters Without Borders Award [20]” category. Herdict Web seeks to gain insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility and censorship.
Talk Morocco [21] — an edited forum intended to encourage intelligent, open, and honest debate on issues relating to Morocco and the diaspora created by Global Voices authors Jillian C. York [22] and Hisham [23] — shares the award nomination in the English weblog category [24] alongside with Voice from Gaza [25], You Are Not Here [26] and others.
Another Global Voices author, Jorge Gobbi [27] has been blogging travel tips in Spanish on Blog de Viajes [28] since 2003. The blog has already won the Best Spanish Travel Blog Award by travel guide publisher Lonely Planet. Check other blogs in this category here [29].
Canadian blogger nominee threatened with death
Michelle Blanc [30], a Canadian transsexual women who blogs in French about her life transformation is among the nominees in the French weblog category. Michelle recently discovered [31] [fr] several disturbing threats on her life posted on YouTube and other websites.
Alongside Michelle's blog, Femme 2.0 ou le parcour transsexuel [32] in the French category, there are many others, such as La Vigie du Web [33], Chez Gangoueus [34], Chroniques de la loose [35], Entendu à Paris [36] and more.
Don't forget to vote for all your favorites!
Also see: Arab World: Pulling all the Stops for the BoBs [37]