Ushahidi named best weblog in Deutsche Welle's BOB awards

Ushahidi, the crowd-sourced site for tracking crises, has scooped the top prize for best weblog in this year's Deutsche Welle BOBs.

The site, founded by an American and African team in Kenya in 2008, aims to provide information to citizens during traumatic events.

Originally used to track unrest during Kenya's presidential elections in 2008, the software and platform has now been used for other world events, including this year's disaster in Haiti, helping citizens to track earthquake victims.

"The jury was ultimately won over by Ushahidi's innovative approach to collecting and compiling information from users and the important role it has already played in crisis situations throughout the world," announced the BOB award organisers.

It also awarded prizes for best blog in each language. The site Talk Morocco, a forum "for open debate and discussion on social issues facing Morocco and the diaspora," took the prize for best English language blog.

An Iran-based site called We are Journalists, written by Zhila Bani Jaghob, a human rights activist who has been arrested three times and whose husband has been sentenced to seven years prison, scooped the Reporters Without Borders prize.

"The prize should honour her outstanding engagement on behalf of freedom of speech. She is one of the few critical journalists still working in Iran," said the jury.

Winners in the other language and topic categories can be found on the Deutsche Welle Bobs site. Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster, will present the 2010 awards in Berlin in June.

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