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By Izah Morales The Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) is set to recognize more blogs this year, orga nizers said. This yearâs PBA will give away 36 awards under 3 divisions, namely Best Blog, B est Single Blog Post, and Special Awards divisions, and 15 categories, organize rs said. Last year, PBA only gave 15 awards to local bloggers. "This shows that the Filipino blogging community is actually growing," said PBA vice head and chief executive officer Juned Sonido in an interview. For this year, a total of 600 nominees joined the PBA. About 5 to 10 nominees w ill be judged per category. Blogs will be generally judged based on content design and usability, but the B est Blog Post division will be evaluated based solely on content, organizers sa id. Judges were tapped to choose the winning blogs. However, bloggers and readers a re given the chance to vote for their favorite blog under the Bloggersâ Choice Award category. According to a Universal McCann study, the Philippines has the highest growth r ate in âblogging engagementsâ in 3 years. The country has also exceeded the glo bal average for blog readership â 72.8 percent in 2008 âgrowing form 33 percent in September 2006 to 64 percent in June 2007, and 90.3 percent in May 2008. With more blogs becoming more "mainstream," Sonido said bloggers should now be more responsible for what they write. âEach blog is a representation of your id ea on the internet. Itâs like a kaleidoscope of ideas,â he added. The Philippine Blog Awards is scheduled on September 21, 2008 at the One Esplan ade.

Journalist Dana Batnag put out this question in a blog entry dated August 11. She writes:

Where are the bloggers of Mindanao, the citizen journalists who we have hoped would keep us updated on the ARMM elections? The ARMM elections are the first automated elections in the country. If all goes well, the government hopes to also automate the 2010 national elections. I was expecting blogs on th e elections â how the machines worked and how the people reacted to them, even pictures on the voting precincts and the voters. I was told there had been no p osts as of lunchtime, but maybe that was because the voting wasnât over yet at that time.

This question is indeed very relevant if we compare this to what is happening in the United States. In a recent CNET article, blogger s were among those actively participating in the delivery of news and informati on to constituents. The article says:

It is true that the Democratic National Convention Committee handed credentials to a record number of bloggers for the Denver convention this week , but more nevertheless appear to have gathered at the Big Tent. Adding to the lure of the unofficial venue is that the workspace's location on Wynkoop Street is around the corner from a multitude of restaurants and private parties, incl uding a massive Tuesday reception organized by Emily's List, a late-night jazz festival, and an AT&T-sponsored brewery bash.

With blogs allowing anyone who can write to publish their thoughts on the Inter net, Batnag was expecting bloggers to be blogging about the first automated ele ctions in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. She says:

I was expecting blogs on the elections â how the machines worked an d how the people reacted to them, even pictures on the voting precincts and the voters. I was told there had been no posts as of lunchtime, but maybe that was because the voting wasnât over yet at that time.

She adds:

The ARMM elections would have been a good time for citizen journali sts to show what they can do and how much better a job of it they can do. A quick search on Google produced this blog called, "Philippine Elections Journ al," which announced as early as April 4 that it was looking for ARMM Election bloggers. It didn't get any reaction des pite the promise of "$100 payment for every 20 approved articles." This blog wa s set up by Filipino blogger Janette Toral. There were also some ARMM election postings but none about the ac tual election day. Batnag says: "Citizen journalists not only know the terrain, they usually know everyone because itâs their neighborhood theyâre blogging about. In the ARMM el ections, a citizen journalist would have the luxury of hanging around and waiti ng until all the votes had been canvassed." "Until the citizen journalists of Mindanao blog about the elections so that the ir voices â and thoughts â can be heard and discussed, these are just the ranti ngs of someone who believes in the power of the citizen," she adds.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net How do you create blog? What copyright rules should be followed? How can you ea rn from blogging? Blogger and editor of Digital Filipino Janette Toral hopes to answer these questions in her late st book "Blogging from Home," which she launched at the recent Internet and Mob ile Marketing Association of the Philippines Summit in Makati City. Toral, who has been blogging for the last five years, said that she has been th inking of coming out with a book on blogging since 2006 but realized she needed to understand the blogging community more in particular its dynamics. "I hope to share how [people] could make a presence in the blogosphere and perh aps earn a little, without having to be so gung ho," Toral said in an interview . Watch this video interview with Toral. The book is, however, only taking into consideration blogging trends in the Phi lippines because, as Toral stressed, she would not want to sound like a true ex pert in the subject of blogging. On the other hand, she said she will have to market the book in Australia and t he US, specifically targeted at Filipinos abroad. Toral said the blogging community in the Philippines has grown and among the mo st popular blogs were cause-oriented. These blogs contained information that we re not easily accessible in other forms or web portals. She also referred to th e recently conducted Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs 2008, which she organized that recognized bloggers that mattered. As it is, a growing number of Filipino Internet users are reading bloggers to g et information they want. As such, bloggers are becoming publishers themselves. "Blogging is serious business in a sense that you have to have a lot of content , and depth. It also uses multimedia. Blogs have to have authentic and unique i nformation for people to stick," she said.

MAKATI CITY, Philippines â Filipino bloggers and students visited the Commissio n on Elections (Comelec) last week to try their hands on the automated systems that will be used in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections in August. Led by the Bloggers' Kapihan, 20 students and bloggers participated in mock elections, where actor Pierce Brosna n won as regional governor for ARMM over mock candidates Kevin Costner, Leonard o DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Al Pacino and Shar on Stone, according to Comelec's blog. Vanessa Redgrave won as regional vice governor, beating Mariah Carey, Celine Di on, Michael Jackson, Tom Jones, Jennifer Lopez, Brian McKnight and David Pomera nz, Comelec added. You can read the rest of the story here.