The fourth Blogpower Round-up - the Advent edition - is now up at Nobody Important. As JMB suggests "before you head over to see if your post is mentioned, grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea, or a gin and tonic if you'd rather, and put up your feet. Fifty posts are included, each accompanied by a nattering editorial comment. So it is rather long."

It is indeed a superb round-up, and you can read it here.

The Halloween Blogpower Round-up is up over at Westminster Wisdom. It is fantastically written, as you would expect from Gracchi. So go read it here!

The Blogpower Round-up got off to a fantastic start in August, with the first edition by Matt M, but since then has languished somewhat. But now it is to be revived in a monthly format. Ian from Imagined Community posts on the Blogpower blog:

Any post from any Blogpower blog can be submitted, and by anyone. So get submitting! [Feel free to submit any of my posts...]

The first Blogpower Round-up is now up over at An Insomniac.

What is the Blogpower Round-up, you ask?

The first one is excellent [even though it doesn't have any of my posts in it], and includes this post by Onyx Stone on the Ambidextrous Mind.

The Blogpower Awards ceremony was finally held in Second Life today, with a good turn out of bloggers, both Blogpower and non-Blogpower members. We only crashed SL once! After the ceremony, ran by the excellent Tom Paine [who organised it all as well], we retired to Tom's magnificent Liner Limoncello and had some fun, and were joined by various other bloggers over the next few hours.

All in all, it was a great success!

The Blogpower Awards ceremony will be held in Second Life tomorrow! In less than 24 hours it will be under way! You can click on the image in the sidebar to go straight to the venue.

In the picture above, you can see a few of us in Tom Paine's Liner Limoncello, named after Welshcakes who graced us with her presence later in the evening. Tom was sitting looking very James Bond at the bar, whilst I can be seen wearing my nice and colourful tie-dye shirt, dancing and drinking! James Higham was making his debut in the SL, and had a merry old time busting a groove and falling through floors. And of course, who could forget Count Bag himself. Many thanks to Free Jersey for snapping and captioning the pic.

It's not long now, so remember - 1st July at 2pm in SL! Be there or be, well, elsewhere...

As I am sure most of you already know, the Blogpower Awards Ceremony will be held in Second Life, hosted by the marvellous Tom Paine. It will be taking place on Sunday 1st July at 1400 London time. Tom has really set everything up very nicely, such as the Liner Limoncello [named after our very own Welshcakes], the bar of which I am propping up in the picture above - whilst wearing the rather dapper tux provided by Tom and his SL neighbour Zhu.

It certainly promised to be a fantastic success - even though we may cause the SL server Tom's land is on to crash! To get to the ceremony, you can click on the picture above or the same picture in my sidebar. That will take you directly to the event. I hope that I will see as many of you as possible on Sunday!

I have just had a great time in Second Life, where Tom Paine gave me the grand tour of his land, from the blimp, to his apartment tower, beach house, main residence, pool, and sky boxes - one of which will hold the Blogpower Awards ceremony on 1st July at 1400.

During the time I was there, we were joined by Not Saussure, Theo Spark, Devil's Kitchen, and Ian Grey.

The picture above is of DK, Tom, and myself when we were discussing the Blogpower Awards ceremony, to which I hope as many people as possible will attend. It is looking like it will be a great event!

The Blogpower Awards have finished the nomination phase, and is open for voting, so go - vote early, vote often!

To all those nominated for one [or more] Blogpower Award:

You are welcome to use this button to show that you have been nominated and to help publicise the awards [copy the text in the box for the code]:



<a href="http://defendingtheblog.blogspot.com"><img src="http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c315/c_ris/blog/blogpowerawards_nominee2007.gif" /></a>

Or, should you prefer, Ian of Shades of Grey has a logo design as well [in three different sizes; shown here is the smallest]:



<a href="http://defendingtheblog.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c315/c_ris/blog/nom3.jpg" /></a>

Voting is now open for the Blogpower Awards, and there were a lot of nominations! James Higham [who is running the awards] received 425 emails of nominations! James has worked very hard indeed, and now almost all of the categories are open for voting for the next week - voting ends on June 13th at 1900.

You can vote for as many people as you like, but only once a day.

The categories are as follows:

1. Best Britblog or Column
2. Best North American Blog or Column
3. Best Blog or Column outside North America and the U.K.
4. Best Fisker
5. Best Ranter
6. Best Political Blog or Column
7. Best Blogpower Blog or Column
8. Best Layout and Style
9. Best Blog Name
10. Best Little Blogger [i.e. under 100 uniques a day]
11. Most Articulate Wordsmith
12. Most Under-rated Blog or Column
13. Most Over-rated Blog or Column
14. Most Politically Incorrect Blog or Column
15. Most Sadly Missed Blog or Column
16. Most Consistently Entertaining Blog or Column
17. Prettiest or Tastiest Blog or Column [refers to food or domestic bloggers]
18. Award for Services to Blogging
19. Best Post of All Time
20. Most Unintentionally Humorous post

Whilst I have been lucky enough nominated enough times in to get into the poll in three categories [7, 8, 10] and nominated once in category 13 [less good], I urge you to vote for those you think are best in the poll.

So go and vote early, and vote often!

Image by Ian Grey

* This is a joke.

The Blogpower Awards are open for nominations until 21.00 today [I had meant to blog about them before, but other things got in the way]. Blogpower began with an open letter to the small blogger, and the motto 'do unto other blogs as you would have them do unto you' and has expanded since those early days to include a large number of blogs [as can be seen in the Blogpower blogroll on the right]. Through Blogpower I have certainly come across a large number of very good blogs, who I visit regularly. All of the Blogpower blogs, however, are well worth a visit.

These Blogpower Awards are pretty much a natural evolution of the Blogpower project. Anyone can nominate anyone [with the top ten in each category going through to a vote], and it has already unearthed some fantastic hidden gems, and I haven't even visited all the nominees yet!

Please got and nominate blogs for the Awards [especially if you want to nominate me ;>] and visit some of the other fantastic blogs that are already nominated! And don't forget to go back for the vote!

Image by Ian Grey