Nina pointed this piece on book swopping out to me the other day. The idea is to trace the journeys that books make: between persons and across physical distances. Nice idea.
adam

The issue of gender on the internet emerged in my research when I was working with photobloggers and noticed that about 13 of my first 15 interviews were with men. This wasn't intentional; which is to say, I neither sampled for men nor failed to sample for them. It just happened that way, and over the subsequent few months, I interviewed a number of women photobloggers, not only to look at gender, but to diversify the photobloggers and photoblogging practices I was researching. Lori Kendall's book _Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online_ (University of California Press, 2002) deals explicitly with gender, as does Nina Wakeford's essay "Sexualised Bodies in Cyberspace", collected in _Beyond the Book:Theory, Culture, and the Politics of Cyberspace_ (Oxford, 1996). Obviously, these aren't all the resources available on the subject, just the ones I'm looking at now. What I want, initially, is a framework for gender/internet that doesn't ultimately take refuge in difference (e.g. men tend to like technology, women favour relationships) or performance (e.g. people learn, through the internet, that gender is performed; Kendall nicely complicates this idea). Also: in an ethnography of internet practices, does gender become an issue only if the participants suggest it as an issue? Or can it emerge as an important issue outside of photobloggers' awareness of or interest in it as such? The photobloggers I talked to were keen to talk about gender and photoblogging, but it didn't seem present as a factor in their day to day practice of photoblogging (in their awareness of that practice). That's all. Just an update, some questions, and a dead stop.
-kris

I met with the guys who created phlog.net this weekend, up in Newcastle. They run an excellent mobile blogging or moblogging host site. We talked for hours at Baltic through mouthfuls of the world's largest pieces of carrot cake; like bricks they were. And among many great topics, one of my favourites was about the differences between developing a site as they have—without commercial interests; also: iteratively, because they initially just wanted to please themselves, because they are mobloggers themselves, etc.—and developing a similiar site, as many currently are, with commercial interests. In significant ways, the differences are epistemological--questions of knowledge and knowing and how one comes to know what they think they know. Commericial and non-commercial, for whatever else they are, are stances taken towards one's work (in this case, towards bloggers and mobloggers and photomessaging phones and photography and mobility and etc.).
-kris

for those of you who did not already know: Howard Dean, democratic presidential candidate in US, has his own blog.
adam

I have been really enjoying interviewing for, researching and publishing the No.73 bus project. It has given me the unique opportunity of experiencing other people's lives if only for a moment and I am gaining insights into how they feel about the bus, its place in the London cityscape and the social space it provides for passengers.
Last week I ventured into a green cabbie caf on Russell Square and talked with some very friendly cab drivers, one of which just happened to be an ex-Routemaster driver.
On Tuesday I talked with a Vespa rider and yesterday I spent the morning at the Tottenham Garage talking with bus drivers and conductors, some who had been on the job for 25 years. Dave Jones and Alan Carlton gave me a tour of the garage and introduced me to lots of people who were very open and interested in sharing their stories with me. I even got to wear a flouro yellow vest and sit in the drivers cab of a 73 bus. I took lots of photos and recorded many stories which will be up on the site very soon. I am visiting the Garage again next week to talk with more drivers and conductors as well as the Lost Property Department about the weird and wonderful things left by people on the 73.
The website is developing everyday so it is worth a regular look at the moment and the new comment enabled blog will be launched officially next week (as opposed to the blogger.com one I have linked at the moment). So comments, stories and general feedback will be great to have. - kat

I am a big fan of what Kat at INCITE has done with her London 73 bus blog. She is looking for people to contribute their own 73 bus stories, anecdotes etc, so please go along and engage.
adam

I could only get the WayBackMachine to take Blogger back as far as Nov. 30, 2002, at which time the "Blogs of Note" feature _had_ appeared, but the Weekly INCITE hadn't. It would have been strange, however, if we _had_ shown up, as the Weekly INCITE didn't yet exist. Now THAT would be some website! Although, come to think of it, frightening in its implications (think, for instance, of the grant applications one could write, claiming, and with proof, that the website which will be a grant's deliverable had already been up and running for 10 years). Let's leave the WayBackMachine as it is then, shall we. As is, it's one of the web's true gems. A tree among shrubs, as my friend William used to say.
-kris

And about our run in Blogger's "blogs of note": I'm not sure whether it's been consecutive or intermittent, but we've been up there for well over a month I think. Hm, couldn't I check the way back machine for that figure? Let's see.
-kris

Here's someone else—apropos of Adam's post about Iranian blogs—for whom the importance of blogging-as-witnessing is critically important: Lessig blog.
-kris

Kris and I have been discussing the extended run of Weekly INCITE on the Blog Of Note list at Blogger. We wonder what the effects of appearing on their blog roll will be. A surge of traffic? I guess we have to start looking at our stats package in order to find out. I wonder how long we will stay there? [how long is it so far Kris?]
adam

since my partner is British Iranian, I am always interested to follow the development of blogs in Iran. This one I like alot [see her links to other Iranian blogs in English]. Again, the importance of blogging as a form of witnessing and a vehicle for independent thought and expression seems stressed.
adam

We finally have a comments system, thanks to backBlog.
-kris

I spent a lot of time reading in the Creative Commons website and the various blogs attached to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. There are some seriously interesting people working in these fields; I am, perhaps, the last to notice this.
-kris