so long ircworld....hello knowbodies!

Ircworld is being retired...and reborn as knowbodies.blogspot.com. There are a couple of differences; while posting to ircworld was limited to the IRC community, anyone may post to knowbodies. Ircworld was never an official USG site, but some people at the State Department may have worried that it was perceived as such. By opening it up to the general audience, and removing all mention of ircs, embassies etc., there should no longer be any cause for concern of that kind.

Ircworld featured a list of rss feeds on the right hand side of the page - loading them slowed things down terribly, so those feeds have now been redirected to pageflake pages ("pagecasts") in (so far) three categories - libraries and technology, public diplomacy, and government information.

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(the painting is Carl Spitzweg's "The Bookworm")

The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0

This report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government "examines the phenomenon of blogging in teh context of the larger revolutionary forces at play in the development of the second-generation internet, where interactivity among users is key." Although this is a report on blogging by men in suits for men in suits (regrettably, the word "blogoneers" is used to describe pioneering bloggers), it is serious, thorough and substantiated, and addresses matters that might be neglected elsewhere in the "blogosphere", e.g. "The ROI of blogging". A good report to hand to the ambassador, whether you're trying to persuade or dissuade her/him from blogging.