Indibloggies winners
By Bala Shah

150 blogs participated in this years Indibloggies awards.  Apart from the obvious recognition and bragging rights, the prize money was worth Rs. 75,000.

Indibloggies have announced their winners

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The Indiblogosphere has given its verdict and has chosen a new set of winners from over 150 worthy contenders across 16 varied categories. The final phase of Voting at the Indibloggies 2008 event had total 4876 votes cast over a span of two weeks. The figures may be small, but being recognized as a blogger extraordinaire by your own community is no small an achievement.

“Random Thoughts Of A Demented Mind” authored by Arnab Ray has won the top laurels of the “Indiblog of the Year 2008?. His blog has won in this and the “Most Humorous Blog” category for the second consecutive time at the Indibloggies.
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Of particular interest to Techgoss was the ‘Best Science and Technology Indiblog’.  Technology blog Digital Inspiration trumped its entire opposition by grabbing 43 percent of the vote. 10 other Science and Technology blogs shared the remaining 57 percent of the vote.

(Techgoss had published the following article on Nov 23, 2009)

Indibloggies voting soon
By Pulkit Sharma

It is time again for the battle of the blogs at the Indibloggies (indibloggies.org); India's first and foremost blog awards, with the 2008 edition entering its last phase - the public poll. From 25 November to 10th December, 2009 the Indian blogosphere would witness the titans of blogdom clash for prizes worth more than Rs 75,000. During this phase the fate of over 150 blogs, meticulously short listed by a highly regarded Jury, will be decided by the public. The one with the largest votes will be declared the winner in each category.

This is the sixth year of the Indibloggies award, organised by Pune-based blogger Debashish Chakrabarty. Nominations were accepted across 17 different award categories for Indian blogs from all around the world. The 2008 event received more than 2500 nominations. Three new categories were introduced this year for Personal, Business and Microblogs.

It was a tough as well as enriching experience for the Jury, browsing through the myriad flavours of writing and handpicking the best blogging talents from the subcontinent. Pradeep Chopra, co-founder of Om Logic (omlogic.com) and part of the Jury for the first time told us that the experience was enriching. "Indibloggies is a great initiative that recognizes the Blogging Talent. Given the ever increasing proliferation and influence of Social Media in our lives today, we should have many more such initiatives." he said.

Indibloggies used Google Web Form this year for inviting open nominations of blogs across all categories. Later, a 26 member Jury pain-stakingly went through all the nominations and rated each of them in various categories. Some weightage was also given to the Technorati ranking of the blog.

Awards such as the Indibloggies, apart from generating vibes of competition amongst the bloggers, serve a wider purpose of generating awareness about the Indian blogdom, and celebrating the unsung bloggers. "As a blogger participant and later a non-participating juror, I found Indibloggies to be one of the fair and accurate resources in judging and discovering quality blogs in the Indian blogosphere. The truly democratic nature of voting and selection of blogs in 17 categories captures the rich variety of opinions expressed by desi netizens" says Patrix, founder of the popular filter-blog Desipundit, who was also a part of the Jury this year.

Bloggers and those who read blogs already have an engagement with words. So it's a readymade pool - a really large one, and growing - of writers and readers. It is with this belief that publishers Hachette India decided to associate with Indibloggies as a Silver Sponsor. "We want fresh voices and ideas. We've looked for and found these in new places. One of these places is the desi blogosphere. In fact, our first book, My Friend Sancho is by a former Indibloggies winner, Amit Varma. We support the IndiBloggies as they continue to discover and reward the best of the Indian blogosphere.", said a spokesperson of the publishing firm.

The winner of the IndiBlog of the Year will get a scrapture trophy worth Rs. 15,000 made by another blogger, Delhi-based Arun Verma. Prizes worth Rs 75,000 have already been committed from various Bloggers and Organisations.

All eyes are now set on the voting process the results of which would be announced by December 15, 2009. The polls would continue until 10 December 2009. Make sure you cast your vote for your favorite blog in time.