The Indibloggies, IndiaÂ's first and foremost blog awards would be unveiling itsannual nomination process for the 2006 event on 26 January 2007. This is the fourthyear of the Indibloggies award, organised by Pune-based blogger DebashishChakrabarty.
The nominations would be open in 16 different award categories for Indian blogs fromall around the world from 26th January until 5th February. At stake are prizes worthmore than Rs 1,20,000.
The IndiBlog of the Year award, the top honor at the event, went to Jivha(http://www.jivha.com, now defunct) in 2003 and to Atanu Dey of Deeshaa(http://www.deeshaa.or g) in 2004. "The Indibloggies are a sincere effort to showcasethe best Indian blogs. Just going through the nominations can be a process ofdiscovery. It fulfils a greater function that just being an annual awards program",said Amit Verma whose blog India Uncut (http://indiauncut.blogspot.co m) won the IndiBlog of the Year award at the 2005 event.
 Indibloggies is not only about awarding the best of the Indian Blogosphere, itsalso about bringing the unsung blogs to the fore , said Debashish,  Indibloggies hasbeen successful in recognizing the outstanding bloggers year after year, for exampleSonia Faleiro, whoÂ's blog (http://soniafaleiro.blogspot. com) was adjudged the BestTopical Blog last year went on to win the CNN Young Journalist award in 2006.Â
The award process at Indibloggies is three fold.
In the first phase anyone could nominate any number of blogs for any category bybookmarking their site at the popular social bookmarking website del.icio.us(http://www.deli.c io.us) using some custom tags. The nomination phase for the 2006event would be open from Jan 26 until 5th February. Details on the nominationprocess would be posted at the Indibloggies website at http://www.indibloggies.org.
For the second phase, a jury comprising of prominent bloggers has been roped in torate the nominated blogs. The peer review would result in short listing blogs foreach of the 16 categories who qualify for the final phase. This phase is expected tobe over by Feb 11, 2007.
The final phase of the event, expected to commence on Feb13, 2007 would be thePublic Poll where the short-listed blogs will be open to weeklong public voting andthe one with the largest votes will be declared the winner in each category.
The winners will be announced on Feb 22, 2007.
Indibloggies has 16 award categories as follows, with the categories on Food,Travel, Podcast, Humour and Entertainment making a debut this year.
1. IndiBlog of the year 2. Best Humanities IndiBlog (Blogs on Humanities, covering Art/Craft, Literature,Paintings, Poetry/Fiction) 3. Best Entertainment IndiBlog (Blogs on Music, TV, Movies, theatre) 4. Best Sports IndiBlog 5. Best Science/Technology IndiBlog 6. Best IndiBlog directory/service/clique/netwo rk 7. Best Topical IndiBlog 8. Best Designed IndiBlog (Blogs with original designs or with major visiblecustomizations to existing themes) 9. Best Food IndiBlog 10. Most Humorous IndiBlog 11. Best IndiPodcast 12. Best Travel IndiBlog 13. Best New IndiBlog (IndiBloggers who began blogging on or after July 1, 2006) 14. Best Photo Blog 15. Best Group/Community Blog 16. Best Indic blog (Blogs written using Indic scripts, for example Devanaagriscript for Hindi)
Indic Blogs is a category that Debashish has special affinity for; he has been oneof the earliest blogger in Hindi and foresees a bright future for language blogging. With new and easier tools, reading and writing on web in Indian languages hasbecome much easier. he told.
The winner of the IndiBlog of the Year will get a scrapture trophy worth Rs. 15,000made by another blogger, Delhi-based Arun Verma (http://www.arunverma.com).
A lthough sponsorship offers are still open, prizes worth Rs 1,20,500 have alreadybeen committed from various Bloggers and Organisations such as Creativegarh,Microsoft, Tehelka (http://www.tehelka.com), Sarai-CSDS (http://www.sarai.net),Techgo ss (http://www.techgoss.com), GoHindi (http://www.gohindi.com) and BlackPanther (http://www.blackpanther.info) , among others. Prizes in various categoriesinclude a copy of Windows Vista, Blogjet Blog client, Books, CDs, Publications, Giftcertificates, Web hosting package and Sports Apparel apart from cash-awards.
Debashish observes that the community feel is rampant at the awards.  More thananything else, sponsors involvement with the event signifies the ethos of theInternet and the blogosphere , he said.
India has seen a tremendous upsurge in the IndiBlogging scene. According to a recentWindows Live Spaces survey the number of active bloggers in India was put at 3.5million with 39% of the 25 million Indian internet users being aware of blogs."Weare trying to broadbase the awards as much as possible in keeping with the expandingnature of the Indian blogosphere," said Delhi-based blogger Shivam Vij(http://www.shivamvij.com) , one of the jury members at the 2006 events.
Coinciding with the nomination phase Indibloggies will also hold Blogensus 2006, asmall blog survey, which is expected to shed some light on the oddities of theIndiblogdom.
For additional details, please visit http://www.indibloggies.org.
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