Greybeards might remember the golden era of website awards. Late in the last millennium, when the Web was smaller, someone hit on the idea of concocting little award badges and issuing them to websites that pleased them. Their grateful recipients, in turn, would display the badges as testaments to their popularity.
The distinction, of course, was dubious. The awards had names like "Bobbi's Great Website Award," "Kitty GreyCat's Site of the Month July '02 Award," and the "I Love Your Site Award, Hugs From Anki" -- on its badge, a dragon cuddling kittens. That kind of thing.
But the idea caught on, and before long people were shovelling out awards left, right, and centre; webmasters were racking up badges by the dozen and pinning them on their homepages like military dictators. It obviously wasn't meant to last. The currency was devalued; the trend passed, and barrels full of worthless award badges float around the web to this day. It was a classic case of hyper-inflation.
Anyway, the tradition of issuing awards of iffy value is still going strong, though the trend has shifted from badges to popularity contests. This week, for instance, marks the sixth annual Bloggies, in which readers vote for the top weblogs across 30 categories. The Bloggies might not do the best job of representing the depth and breadth of the Internet, but they do give a good idea of who's big and who's popular.
The winners will have been announced by the time you read this -- the contest is on-line at 2006.bloggies.com -- but in the meantime, I'm going to start handing out my own awards. Here are some stand-outs from the finalist pool, each of which wins my Sparkling Elf Fantastic Website Golden Trophy award. Badges are available on request.
overheardinnewyork.com
Fragments of conversation overheard on the street are mainstays of urban blogs, but here's a site where fragments of New York conversation have the place all to themselves. Overheard on the G Train: Girl #1: I was thinking about getting Slim-Fast, because I thought I needed it, but now I only drink water. . . Oh, and orange juice! Girl #2: . . .And lots of beer and liquor. Girl #1: Oh yeah, and lots of beer and liquor.
chromewaves.net
The product of what its author calls "a little free time and an obsessive-compulsive disorder," Chromewaves writes copiously and clearly about indie music in general, and the Toronto scene in particular. (The site finds itself nominated for "Best Canadian Weblog.") Anyone can be a music nerd, of course, but making a great music blog is a taller order. Author Frank Yang writes with an unassuming tone, writes on a something-for-everyone variety of bands, and links about the Internet with abandon. It's good reading, even for people who react to music writing with habitual alienation.
stuffonmycat.com
Cats had to come into it somehow. This time, cat pictures -- the universal sign of a website's intellectual bankruptcy -- are enshrined anew at Stuff on My Cat, a growing collection of photos of, literally, cats with stuff on them. "Stuff," here, includes laptops, dishware, shoes, hats, children, and other cats. The cats look irritated, buried under their owners' detritus and photographed, but they are universally too lazy to move. Go see for yourself. I don't want to belabour the point, but it's amazing what you can put on a cat these days.
drawn.ca
Another Canadian entrant,
drawn.ca is an illustration blog, highlighting the latest drawing and cartooning talent as it pops up around the Internet. Drawn.ca tends toward illustrations that are young, hip, and faintly ironic, the kind that are enjoying a vogue in the pages of upscale publications these days. The real joy is branching off from the blog and exploring the portfolios of the artists it links to.
dooce.com
Heather B. Armstrong was getting fired for writing on her blog way before it was cool. And while her website still features the angry missives about her colleagues that got her the boot way back in 2001, she didn't stop there. She kept writing her tart journal through unemployment, misery, dating, marriage and now kids. Here's a personal diary in the hands of a sharp writer, and in an age where blogs are touting everything from overhead conversation to, uh, stuff on cats, seeing a blog aspire to be an author's memoir -- nothing more -- almost inspires nostalgia. Give the woman an award!
