The Society for New Communications Research is calling for entries for the Second Annual 2007 Excellence in New Communications Awards program. The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 28, 2007.

Submit your entries.

The awards recognize organizations and individuals who are pioneering the use of new media and communications and social media in the areas of marketing, public relations and internal communications, advertising, media, politics, entertainment, academics, community and cultural development.

Awards will be granted in six divisions:

Corporate
Government
Media
Nonprofit/NGO
Academic
Professional (Individual)

… and in seven categories:

Blog
Podcast
Video
Wiki and Collaborative Tools
Online Communities & Virtual Worlds
Mobile Media
Technology Innovation

All of the award-winning case studies will be published in the New Communications Review.

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Karam903

Amnesty International has issued a press release condemning the four-year sentence handed down today by an Egyptian court, against blogger Karim Amer.

On his blog, he had criticized Egypt’s al-Azhar religious authorities, the country’s President Husni Mubarak, and Islam. Charges against him included “spreading information disruptive of public order and damaging to the country’s reputation”, “incitement to hate Islam” and “defaming the President of the Republic”.

A year ago, he lost his job because of charges against him which had been dismissed. al-Azhar University’s disciplinary board found him guilty of blaspheming Islam.

He had been held for12 days in October 2005 after he wrote about sectarian riots that followed reports that the video of a play, believed to be anti-Islam, was being screened in a Coptic church and that DVDs of the play were on sale there.

He is the first Egyptian blogger to stand trial.

According to his blog profile, he is 22 years old, a law student wanting to open a practice in human rights haw. His blog profile includes lists of music, books and movies he likes.

Among his favourite movies is I Am Not Scared.

I had a cousin who wanted to train herself to need only three hours of sleep a night, so that her days could be more productive.

Sean Moffitt, blogger Buzz Canuck, must have trained himself along a similar regimen. His research in uncovering Canada’s 1% Blogging Army, must have taken a significant amount of dusk-til-dawn time commitment.

It’s quite an exciting find  (and I’m not just saying it because I’m listed there!).

Information-sharing, and communities that share knowledge, are among my favourite things, and I love learning (see philomath), so to me, this list is equivalent to what a freezer-full of Toblerone must be to a chocoholic.

He decided he would visit and categorize every marketing communications blog in the country.

He categorizes this website as ’social media’, and with the summary ‘Nonprofit Social Media Activist’.

As for the “1%” ? Here’s how he explains:

Posted here previously, outlined by both Jackie Huba in her new book Citizen Marketers and validated by companies like Yahoo, Harley Davidson and Wikipedia (and certainly embraced by my company Agent Wildfire), in every audience of 100 people, you find 80 people who pretty much stay to themselves, 20 percent who browse, consume and talk about things when asked, 10% who actively go out of their way to talk with others, investigate and have an intellectual curiousity (these people comment frequently on blogs) and then, a special 1% who create content, who lead opinion and who influence through their insight and collaboration with others.

I’ve spent a couple of hours exploring this vast network so far, but there is much much more value here, and I’ll be back.

After this monumental task, he went on to build a wiki so that the network of Canadian marcomm blogs can continue to expand.

I have also not yet checked out his Power 150 post on the Top 150 American MARCOM bloggers.

That will be down the road a bit: I still need more than three hours a night.

The United Nations envoy Jan Pronk has been expelled from Sudan because of comments in his blog.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Blogs – the new diplomacy?