Almost 400,000 votes were cast in this year’s online balloting to select the 2004 Weblog Award winners. The competition was managed by Kevin Aylward who writes Wizbangblog.com. He conducted similar awards last year.

The Best Overall Blog category was won by Powerlineblog.com, Best New Blog was NationalReview.com’s Kerry Spot, and Best Election Coverage honors went to RealClearPolitics.com.

Here’s the list of blog winners: http://2004weblogawards.com/archives/000089.php.

Weblogs Inc.’s Engadget.com won for Best Tech Blog. The company’s founder, Jason Calacanis, announced it on his own Weblog and said his firm should end the year with about 75 online publications.

“The main reason for us not hitting 100 is that we decided to shift our strategy from niche (i.e. scuba or cigars) and instead do bigger category blogs,” including travel and upscale consumer products, he said. Calacanis is optimistic about commercial Weblogging. His goal for next year is for as many as 300 publications. Meanwhile, another blog network entrepreneur, Nick Denton has been quiet. His own Weblog has not been updated in almost a month.

At the risk of encouraging a flame from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com, I’ve been wondering where the bloggers have been on the Bernard Kerik story. TalkingPointsMemo.com has been focused on the story, passing along tidbits from Newsweek, the New York Daily News and The New York Times. But, maybe I just missed it. I didn’t see many other Citizen Journalists beavering away on the story, developing their own angles and leads.

It appears the Blogosphere didn’t care about the story. Maybe the “old media” did a good job on it? Because they’re aware bloggers are watching?

Maybe.

Anyway, Technorati, which monitors what Webloggers are talking about, Wednesday morning reported 1,884 mentions of Bernard Kerik. By comparison, there were 149,551 for George Bush, 14,718 for Michael Jackson. And, for old time’s sake, there were 23,166 references to Dan Rather.

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Google Inc. is charging advertisers as much as 83 cents each time a Web user clicks on an ad it serves up keyed to the search term “Free shipping,” according to Advertising Age Online. It’s one of the hottest search engine key words this season, the report added. Marketers surveyed by the trade magazine agreed terms including “corporate gift” and “gift certificates” are also among the most popular. General phrases like “gift ideas” and “stocking stuffers” and “Chanukah gift” are not as strong. “When you use a broad phrase like “holiday shopping,’ you need to have a broad enough menu of products to impress those coming to your site,” cautioned Andrew Wetzler, president of MoreVisibility.com.

Ad revenue generated by search engine marketing this year is expected to total a bit more than $4 billion, according to a report released by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, at its industry meeting in Chicago this week. Almost 300 advertising and marketing agencies were surveyed. Advertisers said prices they paid this year rose 26 percent, but they could rise another 33 percent and search would still be an attractive and profitable ad vehicle.

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A spokeswoman for Apple Computer conceded, “It is highly likely that Real Networks’ Harmony (music subscription service and technology) will cease to work with current and future iPods,” according to the New York Post. The newspaper quoted a spokesman for Real saying Apple has altered its iPod software so that music purchased from Harmony cannot be loaded into Apple’s portable players. In July, Real tweaked its file format to make the tunes iPod-friendly, leading to an Apple statement that, in effect, nothing lasts forever.

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(c) 2004, MarketWatch.com Inc.

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-12-15-04 1753EST