Lots of new events to announce, research notes to flaunt and ideas to circulate in the Public Lab community newsletter. First though, we wanted to mention that today, cities across the United States are hosting OpenStreetMap #editathon events. Even if you aren't located in one of the listed cities, you can virtually participate, so jump in and help improve the US map! Now on to Public Lab news...

1. Netexplo 2013. The Public Lab DIY spectrometer was selected as one of 100 outstanding innovations in the Netexplo 2013 competition.

2. Wrap-up of San Francisco mapping. On January 12th, a group got together to map in the San Francisco area. Organizer Pat Coyle, posted a great write-up of the trip with a few different maps and videos from the camera launches.

3. Map annotations now online. A bare-bones version of MapKnitter's new "Annotations" feature is now online; logged-in users can use points and polygons to add labels to their maps. Read about and join the design process here; full announcement coming soon.

4. The Public Lab community keeps growing. We've reached 1000 people on the Public Lab mailing list and hit our 1000th follower on Twitter!

5. Public Lab annual in-person board meeting. The annual meeting of the Public Lab board of directors will take place today (January 26) in New York City.

6. Desktop spectrometer pre-orders. Over 100 people have pre-ordered Desktop Spectrometry Kits, which will begin shipping in February.

7. Passenger pigeon map of potential oil slick. Over the last couple of years, the idea of creating a "passenger pigeon" network of people flying on commercial airlines has been tossed around. Jeff Warren captured images when flying from New Orleans to Houston last week of a potential oil slick. We've been working with John Amos of SkyTruth to identify the site and the cause of the slick.

8. EcoHack comes to San Francisco. Get ready west coasters! EcoHack, which has been hosted in NYC three times in the past couple of years, is now coming to San Francisco. Visit the site to learn more and submit your project pitch.

9. Cypress Hills kickoff meeting. Cypress Hills Community School (PS89), Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, and Public Lab will kickoff the Cypress Hills Air Quality (CHAQ) Initiative this week. Funded by the EPA, and with partnerships with the Air Quality Egg community and MIT's Civic Data Design Project, this course with 8th graders will be ongoing through the spring semester. Follow along and lend your voice by commenting on Research Notes tagged "Cypress Hills" "CHAQ" "air quality" and "AQE".

10. SpectralWorkbench.org has a new home. SpectralWorkbench moved to a new server Saturday morning, intended to resolve downtime issues.

11. Silent Spring Institute job posting. The Silent Spring Institute is hiring a Research Assistant in Digital Technology and Environmental Health. To read more about the position, check out their employment page.

12. Mississippi COAST program. Dan Beavers sent a link to a program that the University of Southern Mississippi is hosting called "Community Outreach for Accurate Science Translation". If you're in the region and interested in participating, see more information here.

13. Research notes Dan Beavers shows how to fold a Delta kite (posted by mathew) Problems of design with homemade spectrometer (posted by pluharj) The Clouds are Alive -- ArsTechnica article (posted by liz) Spectral image quality (posted by cfastie) Sustainable decentralized water treatment using locally generated biochar adsorbents (posted by kearnsip)

For all of you who have managed to read through the long list of work the Public Lab community has put in over the last couple of weeks, here's a bonus for you! Teaser: Spectral Challenge 2013 in planning stages; will announce 2 environmentally-related challenges for DIY Spectrometry in the next few weeks.

Have a great week everyone, Shannon