The Open Laboratory - the best science blogging around

Now this is a fantastic project. Even better, it's been going since 2006!

Called Open Lab (or The Open Laboratory, in book form), it's a collection of the best science blogging on the net. Each year, some 50-53 posts are selected from the hundreds sent in, and amalgamated into a book.

Not only is this extremely cool, but it actually gets better. The books are available through Lulu - why, you ask? Well, it's simple. Lulu is a print-on-demand service. It's a brilliant idea - no wastage, no huge print runs, customised printing and it means that people who might ordinarily not be able to get a publisher interested, can still get their work out there. Hurrah!

For anyone who's interested, the nominations for Open Lab 2009 can be found here - over 370 so far, and counting.

If you're interesting in purchasing copies of the previous three years' worth of goodness (which we did yesterday in digital format), they can be found simply by clicking on the pictures.

It comes to about US$94/95 for all three, plus normal P&P. Alternatively, buy all three for less than $30 us digitally, and simply print them out.

Enjoy! I'm looking forward to getting stuck into 2008 tonight...

For anyone who's interested in print-on-demand technology, have a look at this: the awe-inspiring Espresso Book Machine®, which is being trialled in a few places in the states. What I would give to have access to one of these in Wellington...

Also, an admission: you can get the 2007 Open Lab book on Fishpond...for$65. And they're available on Amazon but again, you've got to pay postage and packaging, and they're no less expensive.

Sciblogs

A quick note...

The reason I've been absent the last little while is because of this marvellous thing, on which we've been working (real) hard the last few weeks. Yes, the SMC presents Sciblogs.

* fanfare *

Note: it launches officially on Wed, which means you're welcome to go have a look, but we're still fixing final bugs and details...

A NZ version, if you will, of Scienceblogs, the aim is to gather people who blog about various aspects of science, put them all in one place, and watch the magic happen.

We're doing it for a number of reasons, not least that we hope that it will encourage informed discussion, and that it will filter through into the mainstream media, providing story ideas, contacts and knowledge for NZ journalists.

And we think it will be cool :)

Of course, the bloggers won't only be focusing on NZ science - they have free rein to talk about anything they choose, although we have asked that it's more about science and less about new baby animals in the house (unless there's an ecological/zoological tilt). Nonetheless, there will still be, we're sure, posts about people's music tastes, etc.

There's a twitter feed, sciblogsnz, as well, which will show all the latest posts going up.

So yes, enjoy!