Just back from the International Studies Association's 48th annual convention, held this year in Chicago, Illinois, where we officially launched the site. It was a most successful show, where we met hundreds of interested researchers and heard some invaluable commentary on the site and how it could grow. We also received our first reviews: from CMSWire; from Information Today; and from WebSearchGuide's Internet News. It's a pleasure to see users really appreciating the site's scope and possibilities, and picking up on the value of clusters, tags, and notes - the same features we're most excited about. As always, we would value commentary from anyone using the site.

We're working on some key ideas now, particularly on adding RSS feeds to the Breaking History section. You'll find a new article there on women in politics, with an update on North Korea's nuclear programme scheduled for later today too.

Lastly, our blog icon came in for some attention from reviewers, who wanted to know why a manual typewriter would inspire thoughts of blogs. This is a fine question. (Similarly, why should the standard RSS icon inspire thoughts of syndication? It appears to represent a piece of smoked salmon.) In this case, the blog typewriter represents the Keesing's marriage of old  - what CMSWire called 'anal-retentive' editorial practices, that value rigour, comprehensiveness, precision, and objectivity - and new, in the form of Web 2.0 clustering and tagging functions and state-of-the-art search facilities. It's also just prettier to look at than the text editing software in which the blog is actually composed...