The Four-eyed Journal » Philippine-Blog-Awards

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Philippine Blog Awards!

jhay — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:29:45 +0000

I’ve been totally out of the loop with regards to this year’s Philippine Blog Awards, but from what I’ve read so far, it was a great success.

The awards night was held last Friday, October 9 at the PETA-PHINMA Theater in Quezon City. Perhaps I’ll attend next year, perhaps not. Still, I’d like to send out cheers for the organizers, sponsors and volunteers who made it all possible.

What I’m also glad about this year’s Phil. Blog Awards is that my blogging friends have made it as finalists like my fellow BK-crew Bikoy of Bikoy.net for the Best Personal Blog category and my online buddy Jaypee of JaypeeOnline.net for the Best Technology Blog.

What’s really awesome is that Jaypee won! Wohoo! He broke the news to me via a private chat on Google Talk though right there and then I knew he won the award. I may have never been a nominee nor a winner in the past Phil. Blog Awards, but I’m so proud that Jaypee has won. I’ve been one of the loyal readers of his blog since way back and even encouraged him to go back to blogging when the idea of giving up came to his mind. Now it’s certain that the comeback was well worth it. Too bad that Jaypee was out of the country and he wasn’t able to personally accept the award. But it’s not a big deal as the beauty of blogging is that it brings together people from all across the globe.

You must have known the full results by now, but let me just reproduce the same as this is my way of saluting the winners and sending them my congratulations!

SPECIAL AWARDS
Best Blog Design – The Site Guy
Best Filipino Blog Abroad – The Warped Zone
Best Foreign Blog – My Sari Sari Store
Blogger’s Choice – Micamyx
Best Filipiniana Blog – Pilipino Komiks
SPECIAL AWARDS – VISAYAS
Visayas’ Bloggers’ Choice Award – Cebu Bloggers Society
Best Visayas Locale Blog – Explore Iloilo
Best Visayan Blog – Dahong Laya

TEN BEST POSTS OF THE YEAR
Karnabal by Tuyong Tinta ng Bolpen
Finding Your Soul Mate: A Statistical Analysis by Guttervomit
Lost Gems Of Philippine History: The 1896 Board Meeting by It’s true! It’s true!
The Diving Boys of Quezon Bridge by Dennis Villegas
Twenty Pesos by Lostphotograph
The way of the leaf by SMOKE
Portrait of a dramatic highlight in Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino by Gibbs Cadiz
Kaya Dumarami ang Bading Kasi… by Manila Gay Guy
The Parable of the Furry White Rabbit by Good Times Manila
The Amazing Bulul: A Story of Epiphany by The Cat Whisperer

BEST BLOGS

Best Technology Blog – Jaypee Online
Best Travel Blog – Langyaw – Sojourns and Off-the-Beaten Path Travels
Best Entertainment Blog – Lessons From the School of Inattention
Best Personal Blog – Writing on Air
Best Food & Beverage Blog – Table for Three, Please
Best Family & Living Blog – Make or Break
Best News & Media Blog – Virtual Journals
Best Business Blog – Negosyo Ideas
Best Sports Blog – Fire Quinito
Best Hobby & Recreation Blog – Bearbrick Love
Best Fashion Blog – Who is Elyoo?
Best Photoblog – I Am a Documentary Photographer
Best Culture and Arts Blog – magnetic-rose.net: Japanese Pop Culture for Filipino Fans
Best Commentary Blog – The Marocharim Experiment
Best Videocast Blog – Entrepbuff.com
Best Podcast Blog – Brink Notes Entertainment Daily
Best Humor Blog – The Professional Heckler
Best Gaming Blog – Blog Mike Got Game!
Best Advocacy Blog – Autism Society of the Philippines
Best Beauty Blog – The Doctor Is vaIN

Again, congratulations to all the winners! Till the next Philippine Blog Awards, long live all Filipino bloggers!

Lessons learned from the Philippine Blog Awards

jhay — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:41:13 +0000

Finally I have spare time on my hands to write about this, a looking back post on the past week in the run up to the Philippine Blog Awards awarding night.

Though much has been said, blogged, commented and done, about the awards and the awards night, today is Good Friday so a reflection would be best for a blogger like me whom instead of fasting on my worldly possessions are still enjoying it to the full. (Actually, I still have some work to do and there’s pretty much nothing else to do offline during this time of the Philippine calendar for the Christians.)

First off, Link loves and bunch of congratulations to all the winners!

Main Category Winners

Best Personal Blog: Misteryosa
Best Home & Living Blog: Wifely Steps
Best Socio-Political Blog: Philippine Commentary
Best News & Media Blog: Inside PCIJ
Best Fashion & Lifestyle Blog: Bryanboy: Le Superstar Fabuleux
Podcast of the Year: HappySlip
Best Technology Blog: Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments
Best Business/Entrepreneur Blog: Reflections of a BizDrivenLife
Best Entertainment Blog: Retzwerx
Best Sports & Recreation Blog: Who rides a Vespa?
Best Travel Blog: Ivan About Town
PhotoBlog of the Year: SeÃ±or Enrique: Wish You Were Here

For the Special Awards winners, we haveâ€¦

Best Blog Design: Far from Neutral Notions
Best Free Custom Theme: Blu3zin3
Best Plugin/Extension: iPap
Best OFW Blog: Kwentong Tambay
Bloggersâ€™ Choice Awards: MarketManila

And last but not the least, the Globe Broadband Awards winnersâ€¦

Blog Achievement Award: The Mommy Journals
Pinoy Ako Blog Award: ederic@cyberspace
Family Blog Award: About My Recovery
Blogirl Award: Well Whatever
Deliblog Award: Dessert Comes First

Congratulations to each and everyone of you! Astig!

Everyone knows I did a pre-awards night interview with the finalists and it has been a wonderful experience right from the beginning. The idea dawned upon me when I wanted to volunteer to help out in the Awards. Since my geographical location prevents me from doing so, doing something online would suffice.

Once event mastermind Sir Yuga gave me the go signal I immediately went on a bloghopping spree, it was a thrilling experience sampling one of the best blogs in the Pinoy blogosphere one after the other. I had one thing in mind during that bloghopping stint, get in touch with the finalists so that I could invite them to do the interview with me.

Besides from adding more wonderful blogs to my Google Reader and blogroll, doing the interview has taught me some valuable lessons and opened my eyes more to appreciating the richness and diversity of the Philippine blogosphere.

From here, I made the following realizations:

Time was against me, literally. With exactly 80 blogs to visit and 80 bloggers to get in touch with, it meant that I was dealing with 80 posts (1 post per interview) with only 8 days to before the awards night. So once the first batch of replies came in, this blogger went into overdrive mode. I averaged 2 interviews posted each day and still, it wasn’t fast enough to beat the time. Sure there were some late replies but it was perfectly alright, the major killer to the series was when Globelines broadband screwed me big time.

Lesson learned: Plan ahead, really plan ahead. And get a better ISP.

I needed more research. According to Darren Rowse, research is very important in doing blog interview. Just as like in interviews by journalists, researching about the persons you’ll be interviewing would help in asking more relevant and intelligent questions. This would take care of confusion and misunderstanding. I learned this lesson the hard way, case in point the interview with Man-Blog Editor Mike Villar which follows:

1. How does it feel to be nominated for the PBA?

I feel much consternation as I stand only five foot nine and I am possibly the tallest one in our group, and I was never really good at basketball. I didn’t even know you could be nominated to join! I always thought you had to be some kind of gifted athlete or something. But yeah, I guess I do feel some kind of pride. I mean, someone thought enough about us to think we were fit for an institution that gave us Mon Fernandez and Senator Robert Jaworski.

2. Do you know who nominated you?

No. Possibly a lovestruck teenage girl. We have a lot of Young teenage girl fans. A pity none of them are pretty. We are hoping some of the younger ones are just late bloomers.

3. Why do you think your blog was nominated?

Because we display so much awesomeness online, someone probably thought it would translate to the basketball court. They are sorely mistaken.

4. Who do you think will win in your category?

Because we know how to play dirty. The only basketball we played were in the kantos, with the neighborhood drunkards, with a bottle of rum and coke as a wager. We may not have learned to be good basketball players but we certainly know how to deal some hurting on the court.

5. Why do you think you should win?

Because it’s been way too long. And because winning will most probably get us laid which is one of the main goals of our team. I mean, look at that James Yap guy, he banged a hero’s daughter and that girl named Hope!

6. What would you do if you win?

I just answered that. We’d get laid. A lot!

7. What do you think of the Philippine blog awards?

Wait. I’m sorry..what? Blog awards? We were talking basketball a while ago. I’m seriously confused.

8. Is there a blog that’s not nominated but deserves to be nominated in the PBA?

Blog? Blogs play basketball now? Jhay, you’re not making any sense. Are you ok?

I only realized then that by using ‘PBA’ as an acronym for the Philippine Blog Awards, I created confusion and some possible copyright infringements. Thanks though to Mike Villar, for teaching me this valuable lesson: Research, research and research.

Be more sensitive about the questions. Most of the finalists obliged to be interviewed. Some did not and did so with reasons that really made and knocked some sense into me. They reasoned that the questions I asked were a bit presumptuous and a bit too ego-centric. It even goes ahead of the judges in assuming that they would win the award.

The next time I do another blog interview, it’ll be better, much more organized and it will be finished on time.

Have I missed anything of value? How did you find the interviews so far? I’m all ears for your suggestions and comments.

Philippine Blog Awards: Finalist Spotlight – JaypeeOnline

jhay — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:18:37 +0000

Probloggers say that you can take a new blog from relatively nothing to one of the best blogs out there in less than a year once you do the right things a successful blogger does. Staying focused on the topic or niche the blogger has chosen, providing useful and creative content, dressing up one’s blog with a nice theme, providing the right tools and blog bling and finally creating a community around his blog.

All these has been hit right on the mark by Jaypee and that is why JaypeeOnline is one of the Finalists in the Technology blog category of the Philippine Blog Awards. I remember the first time I stumbled upon his blog, back when he was still using a .tk domain, both of us were still relatively new to blogging and so were really having to get the hang of it. Over time, Jaypee stayed on and just continued to improve his blog and blogging.

It started out as a personal blog where he talked about events and stuff about his life. He then started to talk about things that interest him like new gadgets, sports, WordPress, Firefox, tips and tricks, interesting stuff from the Internet, and many tech-related stuff. To date, his articles are some of the most cleverly written ones about technology, blogging and the internet. There is hardly a post on his blog that gets no positive feedback which has made readers come back for more and subscribe to his feed. Being a finalist in the Philippine Blog Award is the fitting highlight for his blogging career to date. With this said, I believe that more recognitions about his blogging will come in the near future.

1. How does it feel to be nominated for the PBA?

Jaypee: It feels great! I was surprised to know that my blog was nominated and then I was astounded to find out that I made it to the finals. I’m pretty excited because it’s the first time for my blog to be recognized by any blog award giving body. It’s a great honor to be one of the finalists in the Technology category.

2. Do you know who nominated you?

Jaypee: No idea. I posted about it and tried asking who nominated my blog, but no one has come forward until now. I guess that person prefers to remain anonymous. Thanks anyways!

3. Why do you think your blog was nominated?

Jaypee: From what my readers have mentioned, my blog provides them with useful information, helps them fix problems on their WordPress-powered blogs and that it’s visitor-friendly and interactive.

4. Who do you think will win in your category?

Jaypee: I’m no psychic, so there’s no way of telling. Each blog has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

5. Why do you think you should win?

Jaypee: I guess #3 could answer that question.

6. What would you do if you win?

Jaypee: First, I’d be in a state of shock..Hehe After that, I’d thank God and everyone who have supported my blog. Then I’d go on with my blogging and continue providing assistance and useful information to my readers and visitors.

7. What do you think of the Philippine blog awards?

Jaypee: It’s a great way of promoting and recognizing Filipino bloggers, and showcasing their writing skills, talents and creativity. Personally, I’ve found new interesting blogs because of the Philippine Blog Awards which I probably wouldn’t have come across by myself.

8. Is there a blog that’s not nominated but deserves to be nominated in the PBA?

Jaypee: With so many blogs out there, I’m sure there are some that are qualified and deserving to be in one of the main categories. Unfortunately for these blogs, no one took the time to nominate them.

9. Would you join the next Philippine blog awards?

Jaypee: I would, but someone has to nominate me again. Hehe

10. Any messages to your fellow nominees?

Jaypee: Congratulations and best of luck to all of us!

Congratulations to you Jaypee! Wonderful job!

Philippine Blog Awards: Finalist Spotlight – The Man-Blog

jhay — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:45:31 +0000

If there’s a blog in the Finalists for the Philippine Blog Awards that really stands out from the rest, regardless of the category they are in, that blog has got to be The Man-Blog.

Why so? Who else would like to be on the number one spot for the Google search results for “Banana gangbang”? The Man-Blog

Who else would organize Alcohol Celebraganzas? The Man-Blog!

Where else can we find bloggers who prowl social network sites, digging up some of those most mind-boggling genetic anomalies in human evolution? The Man-Blog!

Who else appreciates the music of 6cyclemind in the most special way? The Man-Blog editors!

There’s more, unbelievably so, there’s more to The Man-Blog than just titties and beer. It helps one in mastering the male and female anatomies, avoiding that alien race called ‘emos’, having braingasms and maintaining a tittie farm. Reading The Man-Blog will lead you to places you’ve never been, never imagined it existed and would never want to be in. It introduces, nay, opens your eyes to some of the harshest truths of life like the music of 6cyclemind and man-boobs.

Mentally disturbing but utterly entertaining, it would be a big mystery as to why The Man-Blog would not be included in the Finalists for the Philippine Blog Awards. You do not agree? Just refer to their answer in the first question of my interview for The Road to the Philippine Blog Awards: Finalists’s Spotlight (which is a very long title for a linkbait project ).

1. How does it feel to be nominated for the PBA?

TMB: You see, we’ve been sending out emails to everyone that they should
nominate TMB or else Mike Villar will post pictures of his nipples all
over the blogophere. And we basically scared the shit out of everyone.
So I guess the effort was worth it, but we’ll still post Mike’s nipple
pics.

2. Do you know who nominated you?

TMB: No friggin’ idea. All we know is that whoever did that is scared of
Mike’s nipples.

3. Why do you think your blog was nominated?

TMB: Because we’re awesome! And horny!

4. Who do you think will win in your category?

TMB: Us! Because we’re awesome! And horny!

5. Why do you think you should win?

TMB: Because if we don’t win, Steel will go into a drunken rage and kill
everyone within a twelve-mile radius.

6. What would you do if you win?

TMB: We’d throw a big party and invite evryone. And ask the girls to show
us their titties! Because titties rock! Yay!

7. What do you think of the Philippine blog awards?

TMB: It’s awesome, but not as awesome as TMB. I mean, is PBA mandated by
Chuck Norris? And does PBA hold mass open-field wanking sessions,
where we circle jerk and do reach-arounds?

No, wait…

8. Is there a blog that’s not nominated but deserves to be nominated in the PBA?

TMB: We do know of a lot:

- Diary of a Homesick Pinay (aprilzara.i.ph)
- In My Pocket (noelle.scrufus.net)
- Rising Internet Star (mikey.i.ph)

So, why didn’t you guys nominate them? Hmph.

9. Would you join the next Philippine blog awards?

TMB: Of course. We will be famous! And we’ll get laid! And get tittie pics!
And we’ll be rokkstarzZzZzZzZ l0z \m/

10. Any messages to your fellow nominees?

TMB: Show us your titties, and we’ll give you the award. Lolz.

Watch out world, here comes the The Man-Blog and their line-up of editors, first the Philippine Blog Awards, next a banana hammock.

Philippine Blog Awards – Awards Night

jhay — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:35:46 +0000

Five days to go and the Awards night for the Philippine Blog Awards will be soon upon us all. The excitement continues to build up along with the tension and perhaps pressure on the Finalists as the night of reckoning is at hand.

Do you want to go to the awards night? The organizers has something, a small favor or task that they want you to do if you do want to attend the awards night.

First, you must blog about it. Write anything you want as long as you make it clear to your readers when, where and at what time the awards night would be. Like so…

Philippine Blog Awards
Awarding Night
March 31, 2007
6PM – 8PM
Podium 4, RCBC Theater
RCBC Building, Ayala cor. Buendia Ave., Makati City
Attire: Semi-formal to formal

Next, put a link back to the post on the Philippine Blog Awards official site announcing the details of the Awards night and instructions on how to get e-Tickets which would be you pass to the Awards night.

Next, put your e-mail address so that the organizers would know where to send your e-Tickets to. My e-mail add is jhay AT jrocas DOT com DOT ph. (You know how this works to prevent spam, and here’s another set of tips to stop spam in your blog)

Just wait for their e-mail, while doing so, head on to that post and leave a comment behind for them to know which blogs to check out.

These are the simple steps to get a chance at attending the Awards night. It may not as be open to everyone, but we have to consider that the venue does have limited seating capacity.

Now, all we have to do is to wait and hope that an e-Ticket would be sent our way.