Indibloggies, India’s first and foremost blog awards has unveiled its annual nomination process for the 2008 edition on 16 February 2009. The award process at Indibloggies is three fold.

In the first phase anyone could nominate up to 10 blogs for any category using the form at http://nom2008.indibloggies.org. The nomination phase for the 2006 event would be open from 16 Feb 2009 to 28 Feb 2009. Details on the nomination process are available at the Indibloggies website at http://www.indibloggies.org. This year Indibloggies is also accepting open applications from bloggers to be a Jury member.

For the second phase, a jury comprising of prominent bloggers and those chosen from the applicants would be roped in to rate the nominated blogs. The peer review would result in short listing blogs for each of the 17 categories who qualify for the final phase. This phase is expected to be over by 15 March, 2009.

The final phase of the event, expected to commence on 20 March, 2009 would be the Public Poll where the short-listed blogs will be open to weeklong public voting and the one with the largest votes will be declared the winner in each category.

The winners will be announced in first week of April, 2009.

Indibloggies has 17 award categories as follows, with the categories on Personal, Business and Microblogs making a debut this year.

1. IndiBlog of the year

2. Best Humanities IndiBlog (IndiBlogs covering Art/Craft/Painting, Hobby, Literature, Poetry/Fiction)

3. Best Entertainment Indiblog (blogs on Music, TV, Movies, theater & fashion)

4. Best Sports IndiBlog

5. Best Science/Technology IndiBlog

6. Best IndiBlog directory/service/clique/network

7. Best Designed IndiBlog (Blogs with original designs or with major visible customizations to existing themes)

8. Best Food/Beverages Indiblog

9. Most Humorous Indiblog

10. Best Indi Podcast/Vidcast

11. Best Travel Indiblog

12. Best New Indiblog (IndiBloggers who began blogging on/after July 1, 2008)

13. Best Photo Indiblog

14. Best Personal Indiblog New category

15. Best Group/Community Indiblog

16. Best Business Indiblog New category

17. Best Indi Microblog New category

The winner of the IndiBlog of the Year will get a scrapture trophy worth Rs. 15,000 made by Arun Verma (http://www.arunverma.com).

Although sponsorship offers are still open, prizes worth Rs 1,00,000 have already been committed from various Bloggers and Organisations. Automattic, creators of the popular blogging platform Wordpress and Hachette India, publishers of Amit Varma’s upcoming novel “My Friend Sancho” are the Silver sponsors at the 2008 edition. Other sponsors include The Problogger book (http://probloggerbook.com), Zoho (http://zoho.com) and Web-1 (http://www.web1.in).

Prizes in various categories include copies of the Problogger book, Amit Varma’s upcoming novel, a book on Photography apart, complete blog hosting packages, apart from cash-awards. Debashish observes that the community feel is rampant at the awards. “More than anything else, sponsors involvement with the event signifies the ethos of the Internet and the blogosphere”, he said.