Notable Blogs/List of Lists

I’ve been perplexed by the lack of serious reviews of blogs. There is no reliable evaluation of blogs as there is of say, movies, books and music. There is no where to go to hear about the best street fashion blog, say. Sure, people have favorite blogs, but there is no sensible critique or systematic recommendations of them.

For the past several years, Rex Sorgatz at Fimoculous has presented a short list of the best blogs of the year, and his annual list is the closest I’ve seen to a good blog review. (There are blog sites that list the top blogs, but most of these have little annotation making them weak. ) Unlike most such year-end lists, the Fimoculous Notable Blogs list is extremely well researched, intelligent, and refreshing. First of all, Sorgatz apparently reads all blogs so his perspective of the landscape is stunningly broad. Therefore, he is capable of considering a blog with similar or competitive ones. In his list he’ll mention comparable sites, or blogs that “you’ll like if you liked this one.” He includes the well-known sites if they’ve had a good year, but often seeks out the marginal blog, or upstart, if they are doing something interesting.

I also like his style and find that we often converge in our approvals of blogs we read, so naturally I think his choices are smart. Every year I pick up more than a few new great reads to add to my fairly selective RSS list.

This year I was blown away to find that the Technium, my book-in-progress blog, was ranked #11.

Fimoculous also produces the world’s best meta list every year. Its annual List of Lists lists all the “best of lists” on the web. Categorized by kind. So you can get all the Best Movies lists published in English this year. Or Best Books lists, etc. The genius of this meta-list is the scope. There’s more than 650 lists, and they include stuff like the list of Best Comics, Best Games, Best Videos, Best Predictions, etc. Fimoculous has done this for 6 years; it’s a staggering amount of work. I am waiting for someone to parse these lists and come up with the Best of the Best Lists, which combines and correlates the winners in each category into one pan-annual list.