Dear Colleagues,

On September 23rd, the US Election 2008 Web Monitor has been awarded the First Prize in the category "Online Communities, Web 2.0 and Social Networks" of the Austrian National Award for Multimedia and e-Business (see www.ecoresearch.net/election2008/download).

We are happy to announce the availability of the first Knowledge Planet prototype, the latest addition to the Media Watch on Climate Change. If your graphics card supports OpenGL, you can access the Java applet directly from the welcome screen at www.ecoresearch.net/climate, or by clicking the "3D" button in the upper right corner of the Semantic Map View. Developers from the NASA World Wind engineering team recently presented the application at JavaOne, the largest annual gathering of Java developers and an eagerly anticipated opportunity to witness the latest technology trends.

Dear Colleague,

The ECOresearch Network is an online community dedicated to new media applications that advocate sustainability and the protection of natural ecosystems. In preparation for the launch of two upcoming Web portals on Climate Change and the US Presidential Election 2008, the ECOresearch Web site has been redesigned based on the Drupal CMS. The new system is available at:

http://www.ecoresearch.net/

Dear Colleague,

Some of you have contributed chapters to the new book "The Geospatial Web - How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society", which is now available from online bookstores and will be shipping May 18th. The corresponding Web site at www.geospatialweb.com provides the table of contents, preface, foreword, short biographies of the authors as well as a sample chapter on "Media Platforms for Managing Geotagged Knowledge Repositories".

Dear Colleague,

Thank you to all participating organizations, presenters and individual attendees who have helped make EnviroInfo-2006 a very successful and dynamic event. To document the broad range of activities, a number of online resources are now available: slides of keynote speeches, supplemental material from selected workshops, as well as a collection of photos taken during the conference. Additional copies of the proceedings can be ordered from the publisher (ISBN 3-8322-5321-1): K Tochtermann, A Scharl (Eds): Managing Environmental Knowledge - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection. Graz, 6-8 September 2006. Aachen: Shaker.

Dear Colleague,

In addition to the calendar of upcoming environmental events, this edition of the ECOresearch Newsletter provides you with a brief update on the preparations and program highlights of EnviroInfo-2006. The online registration form, call for participation and list of accepted papers are now available online. We would like to congratulate the authors on their excellent contributions, and thank the reviewers and program committee members for their ongoing efforts as well as their valuable feedback to help authors further improve their work.

Dear Colleague,

The EnviroInfo-2006 online submission system is now available via the 'Author Guidelines' section of www.enviroinfo.net (see the call for papers in the last edition of this newsletter). Please note that the submission deadline is only two months away.

Dear ECOresearcher,

Back from the summer break, we would like to announce the availability of the Call for Papers for the 20th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection (EnviroInfo-2006; Graz, Austria; Sep 6-8, 2006). Addressing the transition to a knowledge-based economy, EnviroInfo-2006 focuses on the role of knowledge management in advocating sustainability and environmental protection. The conference investigates new ways of optimizing organizational workflows, building communities, engaging groups in participatory decisions, and supporting education and advocacy campaigns. We kindly ask for your help in promoting the event - e.g. by forwarding the plain-text version of the call, which you will receive via separate e-mail. You can download the PDF version of the Call for Papers and related materials from the conference Web site:

Dear ECOresearcher,

The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 confronts universities throughout the world with challenges and opportunities, as they bear a responsibility for the professional and moral quality of future leaders in society and economy. The conference "Committing Universities to Sustainable Development" held in Graz, Austria from April 20-23, 2005 aims to start the scientific discourse about the role of universities in the quest to transform societies towards sustainability.

Dear ECOresearchers,

You are cordially invited to submit theoretical, conceptual or descriptive articles to the Minitrack on Environmental Online Communication, held in January 2006 as part of the 39th Hawaii Conference on Systems Sciences. The Minitrack investigates the role of information networks in advocating sustainability and ecosystem protection. Possible topics range from Raising Environmental Awareness to Environmental Web Portals, Networks and Virtual Communities, Corporate Sustainability and the Environmental Sciences (Call for Papers).