The BOBs have been decided!

The sixth annual Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs (BOBs) Awards have come to a close, and the Global Voices community is celebrating the winners. This year, a number of blogs created by or contributed to by GVers were nominated (as Diego Casaes highlighted), and GV's very own Amira Al Hussaini and Claire Ulrich both served on the international jury.

So what are the best blogs?  Crisis crowdsourcing innovator Ushahidi (on which GVer Juliana Rotich works) took the top spot in this year's contest with the Best Weblog jury award, while Jordanian blogger Osama Romoh took the People's Choice for Best Weblog.

The other major awards went to:

Best Weblog: Ushahidi (Jury), Osama Romoh (People's Choice)
Best Podcast: Cajun French Language Tutorials Podcast (Jury), Radio Kalu (People's Choice)
Best Videoblog: Мистер Фриман – Mr. Free Man Best Videoblog (Jury), Malviviendo (People's Choice)
Reporters Without Borders Award: We are Journalists (Jury), Holom Akhdar (People's Choice)
Blogwurst Award: Blogs do Alem and Wake Up Mr. Green (Jury), Ibda3at (People's Choice)
Special Topic Award (Climate Change): Coluna Zero (Jury), Ecoplaneta (People's Choice)

The jury and voters also awarded the best blogs in each of 11 languages, including a new language added this year:

Bengali: Ali Mahmed's blog (Jury and People's Choice)

And the Best Blog in English…

Hisham Khribchi and Jillian York, both Global Voices Authors, were honored with both the People's Choice and Jury Awards for their website, Talk Morocco, in the Best English Blog category. The site aims to encourage conversation amongst different factions of the Moroccan blogosphere and counts numerous bloggers, journalists, and human rights activists among its contributors.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Talk Morocco is announced the winner at RePublica conference in Berlin, photo by Sami be Gharbia