Congratulations to Corante contributor Carl Zimmer for being named a finalist by the National Academy of Sciences for the Newspaper/Magazine/Internet category of its 2005 Communications Awards.

It is, as Carl notes, another step forward for the mainstream perception of blogs: "It’s nice to see that blogs are taking seriously by the likes of the National Academy of Sciences." It's also not the first coup for Carl's blogging: earlier this year he was named the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2004 Science Journalism Award. If you're not familiar with Carl's blog The Loom, please take this opportunity to tune in - he's one of the most talented and perceptive science writers around.

Tune in to the first installment - "Podcasting on Windows: Introduction to Podcasting" - of our new ongoing series on podcasting today at 1pm EST. Hosted by Stowe Boyd and Greg Narain, today's show provides an intro to podcasting on Windows with discussion of equipment, audio software and standards, formatting and editing, preparing for download, and promotion. Greg will also provide detailed examples from his well-known Beercasting show.

For more information on the show and info on how to tune in see this page. [Also, the show's sponsored by GoToMeeting - visit the page above and you'll find info on how to get a free trial for 30 days.]

Suw shares her notes from the Our Social World conference that took place last week in the UK. Among the speakers whose remarks she passes along: Ben Hammersley, Simon Phipps, Tom Coates, Johnnie Moore, Lee Bryant, Loic le Meur, Euan Semple, Julian Bond, Simon Gryce, Max Neiderhofer, and Ross Mayfield. Tune in here...

Can't resist calling attention to a BBC article on the future of newspapers that just turned up in our newsreader that includes a mention of Corante's forebear and inspiration, here called The Corante. The publication, which the article notes was published in London in 1621, is widely believed to be world's "first English language private" newspaper.

For a little more history on Corante's name, check out this apparent encyclopedia entry on the history of newspapers: "The oldest surviving newspaper actually printed in England appeared on September 24, 1621, under the characteristically long title: 'Corante, or weekely newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, France and the Low Countreys.'"

This one has been brewing for awhile, but it's now official.

We are very excited to announce that we will produce the Symposium on Social Architecture (SSA) in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

If you read the Berkman's center mission: "The Berkman Center's mission is to explore and understand cyberspace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards, and need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions," you will understand why we think there is a great fit in working with them on this event.

To learn more about the Symposium, scheduled for November 14-15 at Harvard Law School, and register, visit its website. And to learn more about the Berkman Center, visit their website. Expect more announcements around the event in the next couple of weeks.

We also started receiving our first registrations - so register fast as we have very limited seating.

Join Corante and the leading lights of the social software and social media space for an intense discussion of the overarching themes and underlying technologies that are driving the massive uptake of people-centered, user-driven, individual-connecting applications, communities, content, and services.

The Symposium on Social Architecture, to be hosted at Harvard University on November 14th and 15th, will host many of the movement’s leading developers, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and analysts in a series of lively panels, interviews, talks, and informal events designed to dig deep into the issues driving the ‘social revolution’. Among those who will be participating: Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Stowe Boyd, Jeff Jarvis, Marc Canter, Mary Hodder, Kevin Marks, and Ross Mayfield.

To find out more and register (space is limited so sign up now), click through to the website for the Symposium on Social Architecture.

Renee Hopkins Callahan, who has been blogging about creativity and innovation practices at IdeaFlow for nearly three years, is back with posts about creative responses to the Katrina disaster, pointers to articles on the "Creativity Economy", a preview of the American Creativity Association's 2006 International Conference, and discussion of Paul Schumann's innovation commons."

Dorian Benkoil, a longtime journalist, editor, and media executive and consultant has joined the expanding cast of Rebuilding Media as a contributor. More on Dorian here...

Derek Lowe, in signing off for the Labor Day weekend: "It’s easy to forget that scientific research is (like many other things) one of the brightly colored dabs of paint that make up the very thin veneer we call civilization.

"There’s a lot of stuff underneath, and a lot of it is ugly. It’s the Hobbesian state of nature down there, a struggle for food and water and territory. Being able to think all day for a living - well, that’s a huge outlier exception to the way the vast majority of human beings have had to live their lives. What’s happened to New Orleans has been a terrible reminder of this truth. It’s taken just a few days for the Lord of the Flies to become mayor in a special election there, and the same thing could happen anywhere else on Earth.

"Let’s hope that it never happens to us. Be grateful that you have the weekend to enjoy in peace and sanity, and consider giving something to help pull those people out of the water, out of the mud, and back to the dry land of the 21st century..."

Marty Schwimmer, whose Between Lawyers colleague Ernie Svenson lives in New Orleans and has been reporting on his experiences and reactions on his blog, took it upon himself to investigate how authorities might come by the additional helicopters that are needed to plug the breached levees. His findings here...

Vin Crosbie introduces the newest addition to the Rebuilding Media roster of commentators on the disruptive forces at work in the media industry: Ben Compaine. Ben is a consultant, entrepreneur, policy wonk, academic, and author of numerous influential books and articles including "Who Owns the Media: Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry", winner of the Robert Picard Award for Best New Book in Media Economics.

Ben has been studying the media industry and its impact on society, culture and regulation since 1978, is a noted expert in communications theory, policy, and practice, and has published extensively about media ownership and competition. We're thrilled he's aboard and point you to Rebuilding Media where his blogging will begin shortly...

Ross Mayfield, longtime contributor to Many-to-Many and co-founder and CEO of Socialtext, has announced the release of its Wikiwyg, an open source what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor for wikis you can read more about here.

Stowe addresses, in this post at Get Real, the confusion that's arisen about the Portland, OR event on podcasting that Corante is no longer associated with.

Stowe, in a piece entitled "Social Architecture: The Foundation of The Blogosphere", lays out his latest thinking on the emerging infrastructure of the Social Web and refers to the event Corante will be hosting in Boston on the topic in November.

Says Stowe, in wrapping up the post: "The continued growth of the Blogosphere will make its social architecture even more of an global asset that it has already proven to be. We will continue to witness enormous technological innovation, with dozens of new Flickrs, Technoratis, and De.licio.uses appearing in the next year. As more writing (and other media, like audio, video, and photography) is generated on an ever widening range of topics, more and more machine-generated analysis of human social gestures, and the gestures themselves, will play an increasingly important role in making sense of the Web. Without these techniques, the explosion of the Blogosphere will overwhelm our traditional information-based approaches.

"The criticality of these activities will cause friction on technological, societal, and economic levels, and as so those of us who are most interested and involved in these discussions may have a significant impact on the future direction of the socialized Web. The planned Symposium is intended to bring together thought leaders, practitioners, and entrepreneurs in the arena and to explore the various threads making up the discussion about social architecture."

Read it all here...

Neurotech expert and longtime Corante contributor at Brain Waves, Zack Lynch has announced the debut of Neurotech Insights, a paid, semi-monthly newsletter covering the neurotech industry. Geared towards investors, analysts and industry execs, Neurotech Insights surveys market developments, reports on clinical trials, analyzes recent deals, and profiles interesting companies and individuals in what he says is a $100 billion market.

Learn more about the report from Zack himself and be sure to catch his offer at the end of his post for how to get a discount on the annual subscription rate.

Don't miss danah boyd's post from a few days ago on patterns she's observed in an analysis of Technorati data on a random selection of 500 blogs. Among her observations:

• When bloggers link to another blog, it is more likely to be same gender.
  
• Blogrolls seem to be very common on politically-oriented blogs and always connect to blogs with similar political views (or to mainstream media).
  
• Few LiveJournals have a blogroll but almost all have a list of friends one click away. This is not considered by search tools that look only at the front page.
  
• Links indicate no weight, no valence, no attributes. I know Technorati has asked folks to indicate positive/negative in their links or to use nofollow, but few do this. And even if people did, that kind of articulation is a social disaster
  
• On LJ and Xanga, there’s a gender division in blogrolls whereby female bloggers have mostly female “friends” and vice versa.

Elizabeth Lane Lawley, who couldn't attend, and Ross Mayfield, who could attended the pre-dinner, provide post-event commentary on the recently wrapped BlogHer conference on Many-to-Many.

Derek Lowe, researcher and brilliant chronicler of the process of drug discovery on In the Pipeline, is profiled in the most recent issue of The Scientist.

Also, try to catch Vin Crosbie today on NPR's Talk of the Nation where he'll be discussing, as previewed here in our new blog Rebuilding Media, 'citizen journalism'.

We've made the decision to postpone the Podcast Hotel. It was a tough decision given how much time and energy we've put into it but ultimately the right one given recent logistical concerns re: the venue and location.

We remain excited about what we'd cooked up and are still committed to creating a breakout event both in terms of format and content, but are afraid we're going to have to wait till a later date to put it on. We're in the process of contacting all associated parties and those who've registered so far. If you have any questions re your registration, the affiliate program, sponsorship, or anything else please contact us at ph@corante.com.

Some Corante news to share: we've added Francois Gossieaux, a new executive and partner, to the mix. We've been working with Francois, who has also invested in the company, on a consulting basis over the past few months, mutually decided to consumate the flirtation recently, and already consider him an integral and invaluable part of the team.

Amongst the many things he brings to the table: a shared vision of where things are headed and opportunity lies, a wealth of knowledge about this rapidly evolving social media space, lots of ideas, an ability to think strategically while also executing on the day-to-day, and, most important, integrity and passion. We've already benefitted greatly from his coming aboard and look forward to all working closely together to help Corante realize its full potential.

His title, though we're not big fans of them in general: CMO and VP of business development. His charge: to grow our sales operation, to develop and deepen partnerships, and to lead our marketing efforts. As well as to help us think creatively about how to support Corante - our contributors and community - and prepare for the other side of this paradigm shift that's well underway.

We've got lots of new offerings on the way, look forward to telling you about them in the weeks and months ahead, and are thrilled Francois is aboard to help push Corante forward. Interested in partnering with Corante? Francois is your man - email him at francois-at-corante.com.

Don't miss our newest blog -- authored by Vin Crosbie and Bob Cauthorn and called Rebuilding Media -- that will take a hard look at the media industry and the forces and factors that are driving the disruptive change already well underway.

Vin and Bob love the media business and the craft of journalism but both have harsh words for an industry they see as far too slow to respond to the rapidly changing economics, audience dynamics, and general trends that are radically reshaping the media landscape.

From Vin's opening post:
"...We expect that many of today's new media might be turn out to be
merely short-lived steps towards even better, newer media. We won't be
surprised if different, newer, and unexpected usages may soon be found
for today's new media. We believe that we're perhaps only one-third to
one-half way through the fundamental change now underway that might
take decades; and that better, newer new media will be developed..."

"Whatever the future holds, we know now that old media are doomed to be
replaced by new media. The declines in newspaper and magazine
readerships, in radio listenerships, in television viewerships, and in
cinema visitorships are obvious, well predate the rise of the
Internet, and are accelerating..."

Read on and tune in for more of the same at Rebuilding Media.

We've relaunched the site for the Podcast Hotel, Corante's first large scale event that's scheduled for early September in Portland, OR.

The focus: podcasting of course.

Hosted at Portland's hottest new hotel – The Jupiter and its adjoining bar and restaurant - The Doug Fir Lounge, the Podcast Hotel won't be like other conferences. Sure, there'll be talks and panel discussions and the like aimed to educate, illuminate and prognosticate. And yes, you'll hear from the field's leading thinkers and doers. But we're also looking to design a different sort of event, a fun and varied "unconference" that fully embraces communication and collaboration and creativity. And one that creates a community that will continue on after everyone heads back home.

Find out more on our just relaunched site for the Podcast Hotel. And come join us for what should be a special and memorable few days...

Marty Schwimmer, in tracking how an ironic comment on a blog about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was amplified and recast as a slur: "Gordon Allport, in the 'The Psychology of Rumor' describes the manner in which rumors are transmitted: The story is leveled - details essential for understanding... are removed. The story is sharpened - the source of the 'facts' are no longer Wikipedia and the NY Times but 'the left' and 'Democrats.' The story is assimilated - the story is changed to make sense to those spreading the rumor." Read on...

Donna Wentworth: "I'm building a list, and I hope you, Copyfight's readers, can help. As you might imagine, it's not a list of iTunes -- it's a list of links to the very best writing, webcasts, podcasts, blogs, and other resources for people learning about the battle for balanced intellectual property law and policy in the digital age. And the cool thing is, the list won't sit stranded on a website by itself, waiting for people to stumble on it. Instead, as part of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society's brand new 'H20 Playlists,' it'll become a shared playlist that anyone interested in the copyfight can tune in to..."

What leadership qualities do women bring to the table? BlogHer Conference
co-founder Jory Des Jardins wasn't so sure, until she fell head first into
planning the first blogging conference for women. In part one of her
three-part series for Future Tense, Jory explores women's unique
characteristics, how they've prevented women from moving foward, and how
they can be fully leveraged to make things happen.

Her first post: The Power of the X Chromosome in the Workplace