Uncool Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards

In it�s second year the idea of israellycool.com have been picked up by the Jerusalem Post eager like any other MSM outlet today to redirect the blogging energy.

One look at the israellycool.com and you can see how uncool is the site, lacking in elementary design sense. The site will easily score lowest on usability, no wonder the awards logo now splattered across multiple blogs is a graphic eyesore. There are blogs in the running that are only a month old like the "beyond boring and tedious" Beyond BT!

But let's look at one blog, Jewish Russian Telegraph nominated for the "Best Politics and Current Afairs" and "Best Overall Blog".

Name: Telegraph was cool when adopted by several newspapers hundred years ago, the name telegraph was synonymous with speed, it was email of the time. It takes a particularly heavy dose of backward thinking to call a blog a "telegraph".

Design: Kitschy colors combined with print like narrow columns make this blog an internet usability disaster nominee.

Content: JRT has exhibited a mastery of cut and paste. You can go from top to bottom and it is all reprints. I mean holy crap, the entire articles� Not an ordinal though, all cut and paste.

Active readership: There is one comment!

Traffic: As in real life the purveyor is convinced that the lack of imagination and creativity AKA "content" could be overcome by aggressive bulldozer like self promotion. Witness the Jewish Advocate article (PDF linked by Solomonia). The JRT editor claims that "the site averages 10,000 hits a week". The Advocate continues: "The site urges viewers to vote for itself, and that it sent an e-mail to subscribers urging them to "vote early" and "vote often." Contest rules permit people to vote once every three days; however, "suspicious" multiple votes, the rules state, will be disqualified".

A question to israellycool.com: Will you really disqualify votes by people who never even read the blog? Shouldn�t honest stats accounting be part of the contest? Does a site need readers to be in the �Best Overall Blog" category?