At the CLEO Summer School in Marseille, I’m trying to concentrate on the presentation about “le blogging scientifique”, but being distracted by the same summer school’s twitter feed. (On which someone has just posted a link to his useful summary There is definitely a difference between taking notes in a relatively focussed way, and trying to keep up with the tweets; and there’s another difference between blogging as a tool (what you can do with it) and blogging as a phenomenon (what actually happens). Pierre Mounier’s talk this morning tried to place blogging in the great scientific tradition of epistolary communication: an inheritor of 17th c manuscript discussion, etc. (an idea from J C Guedon it appears), as distinct from formal scientific publication. OK, but in practice how much scientific discussion takes place in the scientific blogosphere? I suppose the only way to find out is to join it. Which brings me to wonder whether or not our lovely new web service actually supports trackbacks, now that I’ve found out what they are?