[peteforde]

Disclaimer: I'm not a type expert.

It's technically not written in all caps, the font that my blog theme uses for bolding renders as capital letters.

My personal jury is out on whether this is okay or not. Your comment leans me towards "no".

[lindenr]

It does seem a bit more forceful than bold to me; maybe you could have a separate 'bold' font and a 'really really bold' font?