IndiBlogger of the Month - March 2009, select a category
Bloggers! Let's decide on a category for the month of March. Do we select blogs about cooking, technology, mobiles, music, movies, politics, social causes, humour, travel, sports, business, or science? Have I left out anything?
Please reply with the category you recommend. On the 31st of March we'll decide on the category based on the votes.
On April 1st we'll start the voting process, and on the 10th of April, we decide who wins. 
hey guys, any update on this one...
Rene, I am cross-posting this from a discussion I have started on this site (Is blogging a waste of time), thinking that it is relevant here. I have pruned it a bit to keep it as brief as possible, for the full post see the other discussion:
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You are right, Hemal. There are such a variety of blogs out there from the very personal, to the commercial, to the informative to mega blogs with multiple writers..., so one size can't fit all.
You are smack on target also when you say a blogger contributes to the community in some way or the other.
I was only seeking to find out whether this contribution can be made more focused and meaningful.
This same issue has come up in the case of all human endeavours, whether it be art or literature or architecture. People have repeatedly asked should these be utilitarian?, should they serve a purpose? And answers have been mixed.
In the case of arts, particularly painting, painting had degenerated to absurd levels, particularly in the Paris school of painting. Painters claimed freedom to paint what they pleased and came up with such absurd art like cubism and abstract paintings which allegedly depicted their thought processes, but were such that the lay person could make neither head or tails of these paintings unless they were provided lengthy and convulted explanations by art critics.
The same thing happenend in poetry too, poets demanded freedom to write on any topic that they came to their mind and ended up writing absured and highly personal poetry that no one except themselves could understand.
In contract, the major literary critics of India, whether they be Abhinavgupt, Mammat, Jagannath, Dhananjay, Dandi, any of the other greats, laid a great emphasis on communicating the ideas of the poet to his sahrudaya group. That is why rasa dasa emerged as the highest form of enjoyment of poetry.
This was taken a step further by Hindi literary critics like Ramchandra Shukla, by declaring that the ultimate aim of literature is lok mangal, that is the good of people. He further illustrated this by critiquing Ramcharitmans by Tulsidas and showing how this great epic has fulfilled this goal.
Blogging is also a literary genre if you come to think of it, and there should be clear cut yardstick for evaluating how good or bad a blog is, just as there are clear cut yardsticks for assessing the worth of a literary work, a film, a painting or a building.
Unless such a yardstick is place, there is bound to be anarchy in blogosphere.
Bloggers need to think about this and come up with measures to evaluate a blog.
I think this is untrodden ground anywhere in the world, and we with our rich philosophical traditions and logical thinking abilities can come up with set criteria for evaluating blogs.
Recently indiblogger has started a scheme for celebrating one blog a day. For this too a kind of yardstick will be immensely relevant for properly implementing this scheme, otherwise, their decision about blogs will be highly subjective and open to dispute.
Thinking quickly on this issue, I put forward here some criteria that come to mind which could be used to judge blogs, but more thought will be required. Do join in:
- aesthetics - the colour scheme, font aesthetics - type of font, size, colour, letter spacing, clarity, etc., layout - line spacing, spacing between paras, white spaces, the use of visuals, widgets, etc., to break visual monotinity, the overall impression on the eye of the page.
- writing - crispness of writing, grammatical correctness, elegance in writing, spelling errors, etc.
- content - relevance, utility, beauty of the content (such as in poetry or essay), originality, purposefulness, possibility of translating it into real action, clarity in the mind of the blogger about the purpose of his blog, internal cohesiveness of the various posts in the blog, whether the blog is focussed on one topic, etc.
- technical - navigational ease, page size, application of SEO techniques, smart or new technical features such as interesting widgets, code, etc.
- language - whether the language choice - Hindi, English, Tamil, Malayalam, etc., is appropriate to the target audience, whether it is a bilingual or multi-lingual blog etc.
- add more....
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So how do you plan to rate the blogs? Have you developed any yardstick?
Thanks Bala. What Indiblogger should do (provided they get sponsers) keep a category wise winner and overall. All those who write about multiple topics can go in a category that is general.
"Blogs on Blogging"
Plenty of helps post about blogging platforms, conversions, problems, solutions, promotinos, SEO for blogs, related Blogs are very popular among blogger.
Why not choose Blogs for Bloggers
Indian languge blogs, starting with my jaihindi blog
Well i would like to go for Blogs which are based on current affairs because it shows how much a blogger community remains updated,they gave new topics to discuss about in forums.
Dont worry guys my blog didnt fall in this category 
Well, since politics and current affairs are the most popular i'm for this as well! so... how about we all agree on the Art Of Politics and War!?
Guys, best of luck for choosing your right candiate... Vote Bloggers, Vote.
And as far as IndiBlogger of the Month is concerned, I vote for Politics...
Nominations opening in 1 hour!
Nominations are open - thank you for your patience!
http://www.indiblogger.in/contests/
For all you regular IndiBloggers, you may want to refresh your cache to see the changes in our header. Good luck for the contest - Microsoft's prizes await!
Yippe! Finally, the count down begins!
Hey dude, they'll get published as soon as voting starts!
Thanks Renie!
Technology whats going on in the world? what would happen? what happend earlier?...blogs trying to answer the facinating questions raised by WE humans :)
my vote for science and technology blogs!!
Dear Karthik,
The category for March is already closed and Nomiations are on. Try posting it here: http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=1156
in view of current mood and election eaching 4th round politics is the right choice
Voting has started!
http://www.indiblogger.in/nominations.php?id=1
Please take your time, go through all the entries and cast your vote. 
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