The other day I published the latest issue of M/C Journal: 'affect'. This was edited by Mel Gregg - well done Mel! Today I sent out the issue announcement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 21 December 2005

                                                                        
M/C - Media and Culture
is proud to present issue six in volume eight of

M/C Journal
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'affect' - Edited by Melissa Gregg

Describing how something feels can contribute to a better understanding of how it works. Traditionally, academic scholarship has held rational logic and the pursuit of objectivity to be the touchstones of veritable knowledge. Yet in this issue of …

Southeast Queensland has been getting some cracker storms in recent weeks, and there's been some good footage of them online as well. I spent the last weekend over on Moreton Island, across the bay from Brisbane, and we got a great one just as we were snorkelling around the wrecks at Tangalooma. Here's a video of the storm approaching, courtesy of Ann - and I have a brief cameo as well...

Yes, I'm still alive - just got back from a two-week holiday on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, and currently downloading the last fortnight's worth of emails (this has been going for the best part of an hour so far). Also deleted a bevy of spam trackbacks; no, I'm still not interested in playing Texas Hold'em poker while consolidating my debt with a dose of Viagra, thankyouverymuch.

And just by way of a note to self (making sure this doesn't get lost under a mountain of other mail) - Nature did an interesting comparison of scientific entries in the Wikipedia and the Britannica, which appears to have found little difference in quality... Good work.

I'm going to be conference chair of the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Brisbane in September 2006 - and we've just posted the call for papers. Please consider submitting a paper proposal!

CALL FOR PAPERS

IR 7.0: INTERNET CONVERGENCES

International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers

Brisbane, Australia

28-30 September 2006
Pre-Conference Workshops: 27 September 2006

It's been a busy week - partly also because I'm going on holidays in the middle of next week and wanted to finish a few things before then. So, I spent most of last night working on one of the audio recordings from my recent trip to the U.S.: I've now added a recording from my guest lecture [weblink:286] to this site. As I said back then, my favourite version of that lecture was the one I gave at Temple University in Philadelphia, and so I worked mainly with that recording; however, I also noticed that for some reason the last few minutes of it were missing from the recording, and so I've spliced in the ending from the Brown University recording a few days earlier. In addition, I also made some minor updates to my list of recent publications, splitting this up into publications, recorded talks, and creative work, and added a box with the most recent stuff in the upper right corner of this blog. Hope that's useful. I'm hoping to add recordings from my Wikinews paper at AoIR 2005, and the Northeastern University New Media Panel, soon.

I've been meaning to mention that I've been asked to take part in a panel on research blogging as part of the QualIT 2005 conference (an international conference on qualitative research in IT & IT in qualitative research) at Griffith University this Friday. With Alison Ruth and Jenine Beekhuyzen I'll be chatting about the value of blogging for research. Should be fun, and I daresay I'll get a plug in for [weblink:158] as well. Come along!

Well, I've just sent [weblink:158], the book Jo Jacobs and I have been editing for the last half year or so, on its way to the publisher Peter Lang, as well as informing our fabulous contributors that it's all happening. Let's hope the Digital Formations series editor Steve Jones and our editor Damon Zucca at Peter Lang like the collection - Jo and I think it's come together very well and provides a great and diverse range of insight into the contemporary uses of blogs, well beyond the diaristic or political forms of blogging which most mainstream media commentary still continues to focus on (which is not to say that we don't cover those as well!).

We've now finalised the M/C Journal issue line-up for 2006, and posted the first call for papers for the 'transmit' issue. I'll be editing 'collaborate' with my friend and colleague Donna Lee Brien at the University of New England in Armidale early in 2006 as well, and I think we've got a number of other interesting issue topics and editors planned for the rest of the year as well. Start writing your articles!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 9 November 2005

M/C - Media and Culture
http://www.media-culture.org.au/
is calling for contributors to the 'transmit' issue of

Phew - another day spent editing the [weblink:158] book with Jo Jacobs; we're now very close to sending off the manuscript to Peter Lang for editorial comments and proofreading. This has turned out to be a very strong collection of essays on blogs and blogging from a wide range of perspectives, and I think it will do very well. And nothing against our original cast of contributors, but we've added a few more authors in the last few months, and they've made quite an impact as well.

Forgot to mention this earlier - I published the 'review' issue of M/C Journal the other week:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 30 October 2005

M/C - Media and Culture
is proud to present issue five in volume eight of

M/C Journal
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'review' - Edited by Emma Nelms, Kate Cuthbert, and Tim Milfull