McGallen & Bolden, an Internet pioneer since the commercialization of the Internet in 1996 and a presenter of many previous web design awards, announced recently they are back in the award business.

McGallen & Bolden presented web design awards in the 1990s. They are now bringing back the award in the form of Usability Awards, which award sites which cater to the following:

* Simplicity - anyone should be able to navigate the site.
* Content - be content-rich, not just links.
* Coordinated - have good color matching schemes.
* Standards - conform to standards.
* Readable - web page code should be human readable.
* Reductionist - no flashy multimedia unless needed.

This year's 2005 Usability Award winners include (in alphabetical order):

* Apple Computer - www.Apple.com

* Bare Bones Software (the makers of BBEdit 8.2 -- which was released on April 28th) - www.barebones.com

* FileMaker - www.FileMaker.com

* GNU's Not Unix - www.gnu.org

* MacInTouch news (since 1994) - www.MacInTouch.com

* Netcraft (an Internet services company based in Bath, England) - News.Netcraft.com

* O'Reilly & Associates (computer books, software conferences, online publishing) - www.OReilly.com

* Raelity Bytes (a favorite reading list -- past and present -- by Rael Dornfest) - www.Raelity.org

* Real Software (cross-platform software that works for Mac, Windows, Linux) - www.REALbasic.com

* Society for the Physically Disabled (SPD) - www.spd.org.sg

* The Rugged Elegance Inspiration Network (Your Guide to Healthy, Adventuresome, Soulful Living!) - www.RuggedElegantLiving.com

* Xamime (Xamime Content Control & Policy Enforcement by PLDaniels Software) - www.Xamime.com

Timothy Fredel, co-founder and partner of Rugged Elegance, the lifestyle media enterprise responsible for publishing RuggedElegantLiving.com says he is delighted The Rugged Elegance Inspiration Network is in the company of such high quality web sites.

Fredel said:

While we are honored to be recognized, we are also humbled. We know that there is much more that we can do to improve the user experience in our suite of sites:

Rugged Elegance.com - Select "Rugged Elegant" Places of Taste (hotels, restaurants, shops and services in San Francisco) with plans to profile other parts of the globe beginning this summer

RuggedElegantLiving.com - An online publication of stories and commentary by Jennifer King which promotes "rugged elegant" people, places, products, performances, prose and photographs

The Rugged Elegance World Marketplace in affiliation with Amazon.com - an online weblog / blog catalog which profiles "rugged elegant" products designed to inspire healthy, adventuresome, soulful living.

Rugged Elegance is well along in a major re-design thanks to the guidance of our web designer, Nicholas Miller.

Stay tuned!

As we build the suite of Rugged Elegance sites, one of the metrics we refer to in order to compare how we are doing relative to the previous business we built is Alexa.

Alexa 5/3/05 Graph: RuggedElegantLiving.com vs. BioSpace.com

We are thrilled that in less than two years RuggedElegantLiving.com has become one of the top 100,000 most trafficked websites in the world.

At the time of this post, Alexa tells us we are #91,571 out of over 10 million web sites they track worldwide.

The total number of sites registered to-date: 63,532,742 and counting ...

Having been a pioneer in the world of the Internet, we are amazed that it only took two years to build an audience of 500,000 unique visitors a month -- a feat that took twice as long after launching BioSpace.com on March 15th 1995.

Thank you McGallen & Bolden, Dr. Seamus Phan (previously CIO and co-founder of McGallen & Bolden) and co-author of Dot ZEN and This Body This Life, and whomever nominated us for this unexpected but most welcome recognition.

Rugged Elegance is also grateful to the following companies / sites that have linked to RuggedElegantLiving.com. A few of these include:

Google News

3721

Amazon

Bloglines

HotWired Japan

Weblogs

The O'Reilly Network

Yahoo Arts / Fashion & Beauty

NewsTrove

Yahoo! Hong Kong

Joi.Ito.com

BlogPulse

Wired News

Adelphia PowerLink

MovableType.org

Drweb's Domain

Actortracker.com

Health & Nutrition Guide

TheQFactor

World Fitness Resources

McGallen & Bolden Associates

As a result of Alexa's List of Links, Rugged Elegance learned about McGallen & Bolden's Web Design Awards.

About Alexa

Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users.

Alexa Related Links and Traffic Rankings are the embodiment of this vision, growing and getting better as more people join the Alexa community of smart Web surfers.

Alexa could not exist without the participation of the Alexa Toolbar community. Each member of the community, in addition to getting a useful tool, is giving back. Simply by using the toolbar each member contributes valuable information about the web, how it is used, what is important and what is not. This information is returned to the community as Related Links, Traffic Rankings and more.

About McGallen & Bolden

Founded in 1991 in Singapore, McGallen & Bolden Associates is one of the most established and fastest growing publicity and training consultants in Asia.

Today, McGallen & Bolden is active worldwide. They have associates in Delaware, Florida, and Melbourne. Their group incorporated in the U.S., as McGallen & Bolden Knowledge Inc. in 2002 for all areas of consulting work except publicity. For publicity work they are represented by McGallen & Bolden PR Corporation.

McGallen & Bolden PR Corporation, through its Singapore office McGallen & Bolden Associates in Singapore, is also working with various PR affiliates around the world, including China PRC, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand and Malaysia.

McGallen & Bolden's target industries include:

* Government agencies
* Infotech companies
* Biomed companies
* Manufacturers
* Retail & Sales
* Startups
* Authors
* Athletes & Sports

For further information, go to:

Inspire & Be Inspired.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful "award-winning" living!

~ Jennifer Carolyn King, Rugged Elegance, LLC