All posts by Richard Gayle

Science, Web 2.0

Great photo resource

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Galaxy Edge On by The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Images help give a website a nice look. They break up the text and provide some visual interest. Flickr is a great spot to get images. There are a huge number that are covered by the Creative Commons license that can be used. But it is nice to find others.

The Hubble Heritage Image Gallery is another great site. Excellent images of objects in space. You can simply place these photos onto your web page and provide proper attribution. This is one of the great mashups on the Internet. Great photos taken by people can get spread around the Internet in ays that enhance both the user and the photographer.

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Science

Scientists as cyborgs

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Video @ the bench
[Vie Free Genes]

I saw the movie I Am Legend this weekend, and although it wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of synthetic biology (re-engineering measles is a bad idea, apparently) Will Smith’s character did have a slick lab in his basement. Good to see a little Garage Biotech in action.One component of the lab they made heavy use of was a video lab notebook. I assume this was done since Will Smith scribbling in a paper lab notebook wouldn’t have had quite the same cinematic effect. However, getting video into the lab will be important for democratizing biological engineering. A lot of the barriers to would be bio-hackers lay in the difficulty of learning biological protocols from texts. New graduate students benefit enormously from hands-on learning with a mentor in their early days in lab, and without this visual teaching getting booted up in the lab is extremely frustrating.

will.JPGNew science video sites like Jove and Scivee.tv suffer because labs aren’t really equipped to capture video. So at best you’ll be able to disseminate talks, but video protocols are going to be very hard to pull off. I’ve been thinking about video lab notebooks / protocols since Tom Knight brought up some clever ways you might set your bench up to accommodate video capture (cameras in various spots, foot-petal control, and smart ways to handle the data). A more nerdy looking way to do this (no offense to Will Bosworth who used to work around the Endy Lab) is the head-mounted video camera described by Saul Griffith in Make magazine.

There are also some wireless web-cameras that might make your setup cheaper. If anyone is doing a good job of taking video at the bench, please let me know about your setup.


Video use in social media will be explosive when the tools get more mature. Will they be a major way that research is communicated? Maybe not always but I visited the Seattle Science Foundation last week and saw what medical theaters can do when hi-def video is built into the infrastructure. Almost everything can be transmitted/archived on video. How will things change when we really can archive everything?

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General, Web 2.0

DIY IT?

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“fun, easy-to-use, collaborative applications” …in the workplace?:
istock_000004211579xsmall.jpg

Sarah Perez has written an excellent piece on the new trend of Technology Populism – where “more and more people are functioning as their own IT department at work.”

More than anything, IT Managers need to realize that the power of individuals to provision their own applications, information, and social networks is a trend that’s unlikely to stop. They can block sites on their firewall, but as users venture out on laptop computers beyond the company’s walls, those sites become accessible again.

It’s like a hydra – cut off one head, proverbially speaking, and three more will grow it its place. People will use what they want to use.

For an IT manager to successfully balance the risks and rewards of technology populism, they must first embrace the trend to move forward, then they must address their particular company’s exposure levels.

Some IT managers dig their heels in and refuse to embrace the new trend.

But I think that group is smaller than one would think. Many more IT managers try to address and manage exposure levels – but the problem is they jump right to that step without first putting out the message that they embrace the new trend, and I think that leads people to think they don’t.

[More]

Read the whole article. There is a nice graphic dealing with the percentage of companies planning on using social media. It appears that many companies will be using these technologies without even knowing it. They are just too easy for any employee to implement. The take home message – a company may feel that it knows what is happening but often it employees are using the new tools whether the company plans to or not. Better to grab the tiger’s tail and hope to keep up than to just close your eyes. Because, very often, that tiger takes you on a trip that adds real value to the organization.

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Science, Web 2.0

I missed the first 18!

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by MuniMan

Bio::Blogs #18:

The 18th edition of Bio::Blogs can be read at Bioinformatics Zen. The main focus of this months’ edition is Open Science with many links to interesting new developments. In particular go have a look at this video that Michael Barton made about science and the web. Unless there are any other volunteers the 19th edition of Bio::Blogs will be hosted by me again at Public Rambling.

Bioinformatics and Open Science seem to be made for each other. There is a proposal to discuss Open Science at the Pacific Symposium of Biocomputing next year. I hope it gets accepted. I’d love a reason to go to Hawaii.

Additionally, the increasing use of these sorts of aggregations, also called Carnivals, is a very novel expansion of normal scientific tendencies. Each member of the community gets to host the Carnival, which is mostly made up of links to appropriate posts by other members. So, it is a great way for all the members of the community to get to know each other. It also allows new members to very quickly get up to speed with who does what in the community. Another example of how social media can speed up even internet time.

 

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Knowledge Creation, Web 2.0

Just what is Twitter

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by CoreForce

CommonCraft does really excellent presentations and this is a great introduction to Twitter. I’d just have to get a lot better with my TXTing skills to use my phone, although you can use Twitter from the computer. The key, as with most Web 2.0 approaches, is the conversations that can occur. Twitter furthers an intense conversation between people separated in both space and time.

Twitter in Plain English

until we get Flash embeds working properly, you can see this at CommonCraft Twitter.

Web 2.0

More on GSP AppNite Prize

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GSP AppNite Prize: “Social Graph”-etched MacBook Air (by SocialMedia):


Social Media Laser Etched MacBook Air
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid

Nice shot by Scott Beale of a MacBook Air etched with Social Graph pattern, one of the prizes for AppNite (writeup by RWW) @ Graphing Social Patterns West.  Nick Gonzalez lovingly & carefully brought it all the way to San Diego from Palo Alto.

The MacBook Air was provided by AppNite sponsor SocialMedia.com; other AppNite prizes provided by Google OpenSocial team & Facebook Platform team.  Charles River Ventures was also an AppNite sponsor, and Jim Scheinman & Nick helped emcee.

The AppNite winners were:
* DeveloperAnalytics
* ReadingSocial, by HungryMachine
* Chirpscreen, by Chirp

Special thanks to Andy Stack, Oortle/PhotoPhlow, for helping setup SMS voting via Mozes (and also to Facebook, who graciously sponsored the open bar, so as to loosen up the voting ;)

This is a nice picture of the Mac that was first prize. I voted for Chirpscreen, which was cool but since there were a lot of developers there, it was not surprising that the developer Analytics won. Voting by SMS was nice and something to think about. Using cell phones to collect information in realtime during a presentation would be very interesting.

Web 2.0

GSP – Making money

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Advertising & Monetization: Turning Apps into Dollars

Jim Scheinman (Charles River Ventures), Seth Goldstein (SocialMedia.com), Scott Rafer (Lookery), Troy Young (VideoEgg), Murtaza Hussain (Peanut Labs, Inc)

Jim gave background on current Web 2.0 situation. Can make money now but could see end of good times. Slowdown rather than burst bubble. CURRENT AD MARKET – $21 BILLION IN 2007. $45 billion worldwide.

CPM; CPC; COI; incentives; CPA; non advertising models such as gifts.

Seth – co-founder, CEO; Appsoholic – measures interactions with ads. to make it big need to include big brands.

Troy – bring brands into media such as video (videoegg). video preview can be formatted to any size. when clicked on, it can load large size frame wth video. pays on engagement of large video. so want people to engage page by clicking on.

Scott – getting high value sites. can not get people to register so can not target ads. but FB knows about everyone. try to get them together so ads make sense.

Murtein – market research. used oregon trail. fill out survey to allow movement of wagon on trail.

brands – Seth. no one silver bullet for brand. so no real ad standards yet. everyone is still learning. best apps depend on where ad is placed. i.e. place ad at step 14 in which beatle are you. then they will answer since already invested.
troy dicsussed scaling. TV really easy to buy. like a commodity. but online has fragmentation etc. really hard to make happen over many, many sites. big challenge because banner model is broken. take a long time for big brands.

Web 2.0

GSP – O’Reilly Research on Apps

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The Big Picture: Facebook App Stats & Trends, An O’Reilly Update

Roger Magoulas

Lots of stats. 650 apps a week over last 8 months But starting in December 2007 usage has become flat. top 200 usage follows power law. Top 5% has 50% of usage. Top 10% is >90%.

FnWall and SuperWall. One was installed more but the other was used more. Flatness may come more from loss of usage in these two apps than real flatness.

lots of winner take all in different categories. Games mostly have non-winner. others do have 1 winner.

looking at installs vs usage.

Andy –

realtime enabling. use FLickr as container to see photos. allows synchronous. all through the browser. photophlow.com closed beta.

Web 2.0

GSP – Develop an App

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Social Application Development 101: Elements of Style

Jia Shen (RockYou), R. Tyler Ballance (Slide.com)

Jia started. some basic info/stats on social channels (FB, etc.) App verticals – channel, content, quiz,games, gifts, self -expression.

viral multiplier – apps grow without marketing. 1 user causes more than 1 to install. need to track. notifications needed also.

Then need engagement of users. Virality vs engagement – grow outside of core. get users to spread. don’t hurt user experience.

engagement – build user experience. stickiness. prevent uninstalls.

email is important for engagement/reengagement. in profile engagement is also useful. non-user page is even mopre important because it engages them before they install.

OpenSocial – can add functionality. but can monetize? Different model that used to. huge audience. profile vs news-feed. what is the viral channel?

opensocial channels – profile. also main page on FB. but most opensocial channels are up in the air since many are being conservative.

plan is no different than Facebook launch. focus on demographic. instrument virality but focus on Apps that are not dependent on virality.

Tyler – works at slide (used keynote on Mac). will take about FB platform (include Bebo also). need to understand audience. need to be ready for cross-platform development that is more than just specific widgets. FB has had 10 months. Bebo is getting closer. but FB has a lot more to use (i.e. mobile).

transition from widget to apps. can use same codebase going from FB to bebo. FunWall is example. but need to maintain look and feel (myspace is hectic. FB is blue.) but need to maintain branding. example iLike is orange. slide has a banner logo.

FBML tags are important aspects of look and feel.