Voting starts today for the Weblog awards

As mentioned late last week, Inca Kola News has been chosen as one of the 10 finalists for "Best Latino, Caribbean or South American Blog" in the prestigious 2008 Weblog Awards....which is cool.

So now it's all up to you! Your gratefully-humbled-but-proud Otto will be the happiest dude in the barrio if he finishes in the top five, so if you'd be so kind click on this banner below and go to the voting site (starting Monday 9am New York time, so I'm told)

Then click a vote for Inca Kola News, if you'd be so kind again. Thanks in advance.

By the way, you are free to vote again after 24 hours have elapsed, so those of you with enough passion for this humble corner of cyberspace can vote again at 11:01am on Tuesday if you vote at 11:00am today (and then 11:02am Wednesday, etc etc)

Voting is open from today until January 12th (i.e. one week), so as they say down Chicago way;

vote early and often

Weblog Awards finalist

You better believe it, dudes and dudettes.

Click this logo to go to the voting page

We're not up for the big prize of "World's Best Blog" or anything like that, but IKN is one of the ten finalists in the "Best Latino Caribbean or South American Blog" category.

Now here's the bit where you come in; The award is decided by open public vote. It's an open vote that starts on Monday January 5th and finishes Monday January 12th. I'm quite aware that IKN won't win the whole caboodle and that's fine by me, but I'm going to ask you to vote for Inca Kola News anyway. I've been mulling the whole thing over and my personal feelings are midway between "It'd be great to win etc etc" and "Awww shucks just great to be in the final and it doesn't matter what happens etc etc etc". I'm no rabid, seeking politico about getting voted, but on the other hand I'm not going to deny that I'm very pleased about getting this nomination and would like to do well.

So because I feel midway about it, that's what we're aiming for; a top five finish. So what you do come January 5th is click on the logo here or in the box above and then register your vote. That's all. I'd just really appreciate it if at some point in the next week you pop over and spend 20 seconds putting a click by the IKN name.

Voting doesn't start til the 5th, by the way (in other words, expect to be bugged again next week). Finally, here's a bit of the blurb about these awards as ripped from its site (I've been investigating, y'see).

About The Weblog Awards

The Weblog Awards are the world's largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in 2007 edition and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003 yada yada continues here

Well, I must have done something right

I've just found out to my great surprise that for some strange reason this blog has been included as one of the ten finalists for "Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog" in the 2008 Weblog awards.... which is nice. Here's the page where the finalists are linked and here's the list of the ten blogs that made it to the finals:

Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog

Dolar Paralelo
inca kola news
Generation Y
Mujeres camino al éxito
mUsiqUe auTomaTiquE
El Cafe Cubano
Cubanazos
Luz de Luma. yes party!
Mambí en Acción
popnografia

You can find the list just under half way down the page (these Weblog people do a lot of categories, it seems). Of the others, I only know the Generation Y blog but I do know it does a great job covering Cuba and is rightly megapopular. Just to be on the same list as Generation Y is quite an honour, frankly.

So anyway, they give out finalists badges soon so expect it to pop up on site this week. A humble thanks to the unknown nice people who must have said nice things to get IKN this far. And to all you readers.