It’s the end of the year and it’s time for my first annual BOBBY awards – Bob’s Open Blog Best of the Year. The categories and winners were chosen after careful consideration and all decisions of the judge (me) are final! My usual disclaimer: these are my personal choices and do not reflect an endorsement by IBM.
Blogging
- Best Monitor of What’s Happening in Open Standards
Andy Updegrove’s ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog - Best Analyst Blog that Discusses Standards
Redmonk’s Steve O’Grady’s tecosystems blog - Best Blogging Software
WordPress - Best Blog Search
None awarded this year
Standards
- Best Open Standard Being Adopted Globally
The OpenDocument Format - Best Traditional Lock-in Strategy Using “Open” for Marketing
Microsoft Office Open XML - Best Supporting Actor for a Traditional Lock-in Strategy Using “Open” for Marketing
ECMA, formerly the European Computer Manufacturers Association
Open Source
- Best Browser
Mozilla Firefox 2 - Best Linux Desktop Distribution That I’ve Used
Ubuntu - Best Open Source File Transfer Client
FileZilla - Best Open Source Office Suite Supporting ODF
OpenOffice - Best Open Source Conference
OSCON Portland - Worst Conference Scheduling of Simultaneous Open Source, SOA, and ODF Talks
LinuxWorld Boston 2005 - Best US State that Has Not Yet Had an Open Source Conference to Which I’ve Been Invited to Speak
Hawaii
Other Software
- Best Programming Language I Used This Year for Significant Coding
PHP - Best Programming Language I Didn’t Code in at All This Year
Java - Best Programming Language I Don’t Plan to Code in at All Next Year
Java - Best Programming Language I Do Plan to Code In Significantly Next Year
Python - Best Programming Language I Do Plan to Code In Significantly Next Year Because of the Application to Which It Is Attached
LSL, because of Second Life - Best Website Statistics Software
Mint - Best Audio Editing Software
GoldWave - Best Instant Messaging Client
IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5 - Best Online eMail Client
Google Mail
Music
- Album of the Year
Bob Dylan’s Modern Times - Album on a Major Label Where I Like the Previous Indie Album Better
The Decemberists The Crane Wife (I prefer Picaresque). - Best Reincarnation of Gram Parsons
Ryan Adams - Best Group Doing Traditional Songs About Drugs that You Sing Along to But You Realize You Probably Shouldn’t
Old Crow Medicine Show - Best Reworking of Traditional Material for the Mass Audience
Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions - Best Music Download Service
eMusic
Miscellaneous
- Best Political YouTube Video Starring Members of My Family
Judith Hunter for New York Assemby video featuring my son William
I’m surprised about your choice of “Best Instant Messaging Client”. Considering all the energy you’re using on promoting ODF and how superior it is to Open XML (to which I agree), how can you choose a client that doesn’t support Jabber/XMPP? I can see that they will start working with Google in that area and GTalk uses XMPP, but that doesn’t change the fact that XMPP is *the* open standard when it comes to IM.
My jabber id: pointwood at jabber.shd.dk
In the words of Borat: “Very nice!” I even picked up another feed from them. But beware Hawaii — once you walk off the plane, you won’t want to leave.
it would be splendid if IBM procurement recognised the value of blogs. thanks for calling Stephen out though.
I’d give and honourable mention to Eclipse. A piece of open source software that has had a good year.
- Best Supporting Actoress for Microsoft Office Open XML
- Novell ? ;)
Any reason why all your nominations are pointing to the web site of the original organisation, with the exception of OpenXML and ECMA which are pointing to your own comments?
I never said these were anything other than subjective. I think if I had had substantial blog entries on any of the others, I might have pointed to them.
Well I thought it was a good list, until I hit the Sametime IM item. Come on, I thought this was your blog and not IBM’s.
Harry, look at it this way. I’ve used SameTime for years now for work, as have tens of thousands of other IBM people. This is the best one yet.