Discovering the Hidden Gems of the Internet

Via Tulip Girl, I just ran across the most amazing set of blog awards for 2004. Voting is open for the first two weeks of 2005, but you'll need a lot of time, since virtually none of the blogs is the least bit well-known (with the possible exception of Tulip Girl herself). It's called the "Best of Blog" (or BoB/Bob) awards.

The concept is fascinating, and the entire enterprise is designed to 1) highlight smaller blogs that may not get too much traffic, and 2) steer away from political bloggers and toward those who focus on such concerns as knitting, writing, homeschooling (Tulip Girl's category), cooking, fitness, parenting, and sex.

It's a truly charming concept, and was put together by a group of panelists who made the sacrifice of exempting themselves from their respective categories. (And, no—I hadn't heard of any of them, either.)

Those of us who take the blogosphere seriously as a full-spectrum entertainment arena should check some of these "personal bloggers" out. (My own favorite on a few of those subjects is Angelweave, though Heather's blogging's been light lately and she keeps forgetting to set MT so that it shows the last several posts, rather than the last several days' worth of posts. The secret? Go to her main site, find the "recent entries" on her sidebar, and simply click on those one by one. That'll work until she fixes the display issue. She is the queen of fitness and nutrition bloggers, so stay and peruse the archives, too.)

It's also nice to remember that there's more to life than whatever political point of view we're respectively pushing (those of us who have a political bent, that is—and if you figure out what my own political orientation is, please do let me know). Don't our near and dear keep telling us we should "get out more"? Well, this is "getting out," without having to shed our pyjamas. Everyone wins.