Alarge part of a diplomat's role and mission is to reach out to and engage with the citizens of his or her host country. Traditionally, this has involved cultural events, receptions and business exchanges. But with the advent of Web 2.0, an increasing number of diplomats are turning to the Internet and social media...

CPD continues its web site update with the redesign of the CPD Blog. Regular readers will notice new features, such as the tag cloud, in addition to the categorization of 'most popular' and 'related' posts.

In the last week or so there have been kerfuffles about the blogging British ambassadors and the twitterific cake eating Americans.

The French have an expression for it: Il a manqué une belle occasion de se taire – "He (or, in this case, she) missed a good opportunity of staying silent." The saying was brought to mind by the affair of the British ambassador's blog...

The Shanghai World Expo is already two months in to its half-year residency. Bloggers have been active in trying to decipher the purpose of the extravaganza...

Vietnamese like Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quyn are embracing the internet in full force. There are 24 million internet users right now, nearly a third of the population.

Welcome to the brave new world of blogger ambassadors. Two years after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) tentatively launched a web platform for digitally minded staff, 30 diplomats now write blogs. Last week Turner became the latest UK ambassador to join the burgeoning blogroll; he rubs virtual shoulders with our chaps in Egypt and China and our woman in Guatemala.