Top 5 Weblogs of 2004 | January 5, 2005
So apparently nominations have opened for the Fifth Annual Weblog Awards, or Bloggies to their friends. I know this because my RSS feed was inundated today by posts from people asking to be nominated. I did think about doing the same for a second, but if my site couldn’t even get into the shortlist of best blogs in Brighton the chance of being shortlisted for best British or Irish weblog seems slim to non-existent. I have to admit that I don’t actually read the site, but from the hype it’s created (and a forthcoming book no less) I’d be prepared to lay money on Belle de Jour winning that award.
Lots of great new web development blogs have arrived this year, while many old favourites seem to have faded away. Here are my favourite weblogs of 2004. What were yours?
- 1976design – With a great mix of quirky anecdotes, great pictures and the odd post about web design, Dunstans blog has been joy to read all year. He’s got his head down working for Apple at the moment but we’re confident he’ll explode back onto the scene later in the year with more tales of underwear and the British/American cultural divide than you could shake a stick at.
- All That Malarkey – or maybe stuff and nonsense if the url is anything to go by. Andy Clarke burst onto the scene this summer like the red army synchronised scooter team on Revolution Day. A great site with some great content, well worth a place in my years top 5.
- Authentic Boredom – The baby pic scared me a little when I first saw this site, kind of like the baby in the sun on the Teletubbies. However it’s a really smart looking site that’s had some great content this year and remains one of my favourite blogs.
- SimpleBits – What with his new company, his speaking engagements and a fabulous book I’m amazed Dan ever finds the time to post, yet he still manages to come up with the goods more frequently than most. That’s when he’s not constantly tweaking the design of course.
- StopDesign – This site has been going for a few years now, but is still one of the best around. The design is a classic, and Doug’s posts are always interesting and insightful. Great stuff.
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The blogs I get the most out of are the ones frequently rammed with info and interesting opinion about whatever I’m obsessed with at any given moment without too much subjective personal stuff getting in the way. So for 2004 I’d have to pluck for Mezzoblue, 456 Berea Street, Stopdesign, Simplebits and Signal vs. Noise.
Of course, I’ve not included any of the Brits because, well, they’re just unfair competition in a league of their own ;)
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I definitely think that 2005 is going to be the year of the blog.
I have never seen such a vast array of information available on the internet.
Most of it is total rubbish mind you, but you do on occation find some gems.
Picking a top 5 would be a hard job.
PS. Great Blog :-)
Regards
Ed Keay-Smith
AdWords Marketing, The Google AdWords
Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management Specialists.
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Is it sad that I look expectantly to see my site mentioned but accept the likelihood of that never happening? :)
Seriously, though, there are some great sites. 456 Berea St has been a favourite of mine. Thoughtful helpful posts every time. Malarkey is also on my list.
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I just wanted to wish you a happy new year, so Happy New Year!
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There are so many I could list but these 5, for a variety of reasons kept me going back for more.
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That is such a hard question to answer, but here are my top five:
Keith Robinson - consistently writing relevant, excellent content
456 Berea Street - excellent articles
Anne Van Kesteren - great links to geeky content
SimpleBits - all class
Mezzoblue - a bit quite lately but still a daily must-read
Coming in closely behind are Meyerweb (still the god of CSS), Malarkey (good posts and great humour), Simian Design (love the quirky posts), Molly (web standards goddess), ETC (great links) and many others.
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Aw, shucks, Andy. Thanks. And based on your synopsis, you’ll be pleased to know my next redesign will incorporate themes from Barney the big fat purple dinosaur…
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Turning it on its head, here are five bloggers I wish would write more about design in 2005.
You
Jason Santa Maria (www.jasonsantamaria.com)
Shaun Inman (www.shauninman.com)
Jon Hicks (www.hicksdesign.co.uk)
Cameron Adams (www.themaninblue.com/news)
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Thanks, how am I suppose to get any work done when you post great sites like that?
I knew about all of them except Authentic Boredom. And for some reason I knew about “All that Malarkey” but had never added it to my bloglines.com feeds. So I “wasted” an hour of my day caching up. I guess it wasn’t wasted because he had some good stuff. :)
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Good choices although I would definitely add mezzoblue and photomatt.net :)
By the way, you have no idea how grateful I am that you updated your XML Feed! It now causes a lot less work for my blogroll script, thank you!
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Andy, you are too kind :-) Here’s to 2005!
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1. Molly
2. Box of Chocolates
3. JoshuaInk
4. This one
5. Asterix
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I was prepared to lay money on your BEING Belle-de-Jour.
Seriously, thanks for the linky goodness Andy and the rest of you.
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Thanks for some of those links. I didn’t know ‘Box of Chocolates’ for example! And although I know you could hardly add yourself in this list, you are definitely among the top 5.
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I have two lists. It frustrates me when something gets best of the year votes, just because it has got popular around the end of December.
My best of the year list:
My current favourites:
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Hmmm… interesting Trans-Atlantic shift now I look again.
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