Data driven science revisited
Chris Anderson once infamously wrote The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete, an opinion that I do not share. Eric Drexler on the other hand comes at this new age of data driven scien...
The disconnect in funding data resources
Scientists spend years collecting and generating increasing amounts data. The data ranges from raw instrument data, “finished” data (e.g. a genome sequence which is constructed after aligning all ...
From Friendfeed to Nucleic Acids Research
About 11 months ago, Andrew Su asked for some help on Friendfeed. He needed programming help related to the MediaWiki API and the Gene Wiki project. As you can see, one of the responses was from ...
The purpose behind research
And no, I’m not trying to make that case that academic labs should make drugs. If they want to try, then come on down. If they don’t, that’s fine, too – there’s a lot of important research to be do...
When “good enough” just doesn’t cut it
My father’s younger brother once was a decently ranked squash player back in India. As the story goes, someone once asked him why he didn’t continue with squash and try to get to #1. His response...
Industry watching: Is there an equivalent of a github for Biobanks?
Image by Getty Images via Daylife When _why disappeared from the web, there was an effort to come up with a distributed _why, by hosting his works on github and similar repositories. There...
DNA Origami and lithography
Artificial DNA nanostructures1, 2 show promise for the organization of functional materials3, 4 to create nanoelectronic5 or nano-optical devices. DNA origami, in which a long single strand of DNA ...
Streams in science are not that far away
Over the years, I’ve written about the web as a connected entity, with nodes notifying other nodes of an event or action. At various times this has been called the “just in time” web and more rece...
Admin update August 15th, 2009
I had talked about Posterous before and how I was planning to use it. My experiment is right now on phase 2. I have removed bbgm from my Posterous list, essentially using it more like Tumblr on s...
Ignite Seattle 7
Another Ignite Seattle is now done. This was perhaps my favorite one, with a diverse selection of excellent talks. Here are my slides. Video to follow Big Data & the networked future of Science ...
Industry Watching: Pharmacovigilance – From monitoring to perpetual analytics
Image via Wikipedia Pharmacovigilance is an area where a lot of pharma companies are beginning to spend more money and attention and going forward, this will be an area of major emphasis bot...
Petaflops meet Petabytes
Image via Wikipedia Dan Reed has written a lot of interesting posts/essays lately, many of which have been covered here. He comes from a world where compute horsepower is king, admittedly a...
The new data engines
Been thinking a lot about data, not in the least cause I have to start thinking about my talk at Supercomputing. There have also been a number of recent meetings, podcasts, blog posts, etc that ha...
The Canonical model for scientific software
Image via Wikipedia This is one of those blog posts that gets inspired by something I hear in a podcast. Also one of those posts that I wish there were easy ways to link to specific pieces ...
Freerisk – An open platform for risk modeling
Image by ynse via Flickr I’ve been meaning to write about Freerisk.org for a while now, but only got reminded yesterday as I read the Wired article about Toby Segaran’s (and Jesper Anderson’...
Supercomputing Masterclass – A request for information
I have been invited to give a Masterworks talk on Data Challenges in Genomics for Supercomputing 09. I would like to dive into the details about the technical and scientific challenges of high thr...
High scale design patterns in the life sciences
Image via Wikipedia I’ve written about software failures in the past. As I get a better understanding of scale and architectures and talk to others about some of the core design principles o...
High scale design patterns (missing) in the life sciences
I’ve written about software failures in the past. As I get a better understanding of scale and architectures and talk to others about some of the core design principles of systems at scale, e.g. Re...
Our publishing model encourages bad behavior
My lack of enthusiasm for the current publish or perish model is well documented. This thread from Friendfeed highlights one of the many problems with the current state of peer review and the publ...
bbgm is on temporary hiatus
This is the longest hiatus I have taken in a long time. Part of it is work related, but mostly, this is about moving domain registrars, hosts, etc, all at the same time. Will resurface soon. In t...
When software embraces failure
I recently heard someone talk about software as being operational. The context was large scale systems and how it is important not just to run hardware systems that operate at scale but also softw...
Web as platform: Chemvendor grows up and becomes Chemcaster
Rich Apodaca is one of my favorite bloggers out there. His blog covers topics of interest at a number of levels, from cheminformatics to Ruby on Rails to we services. He also happens to be the fo...
Modeling molecular systems
Eric Drexler is one of the smarter people I know. We don’t always agree. In fact, we disagree a lot, but he is always an interesting read. In a recent post on the Macromolecular Modeling Blog (c...
A synthetic biology company bites the dust
I’ve been busy, so missed out on Keith’s blog posts on the subject of Codon shutting down it’s doors. It’s a sign of the times. Very difficult to be a company looking for financing these days, bu...
Biopharma innovation: Trying things out quickly and effectively
Image via Wikipedia Every all-hands meeting I learn something new. This time the word that I heard Jeff Bezos use was trystorming, described as brainstorming, except that instead of talking about ...
Orchestrating message buses and content platforms
One thing I have always wanted to do is have multiple properties that could be orchestrated from a central engine. I haven’t come close to doing it, but one reason I adopted Mindtouch Deki for my ...
Biopharma innovation: A marketplace for discontinued drug programs
Image via Wikipedia So I am supposed to be writing about innovation in the Biopharma industry. Here’s in idea that I’ve had that might be worth discussing (sometimes I wish I had the patience to w...
Still waiting for that biosciences startup school
About this time last year I wondered if we would ever see a biosciences startup school. As I read about Capital Factory, I am still wondering. In Boston, San Diego, and San Francisco, especially w...
Talis Connected Commons: Linked open data repository opens up shop
Image via Wikipedia One of my bigger regrets over the last year or so has been not being able to pursue some of the projects I’ve wanted to, including getting very familiar with the linked data sta...
Frameworks for modeling and simulation
Recently, I have found myself putting my product manager hat back on and trying to imagine how I might design the next-gen molecular simulation system. Since these thoughts tend to be scattered ove...
The web, science and experience
We have been talking about the web, open science, etc for a few years now and our experiences are really beginning to show, as evidenced by a couple of great recent examples. First Pawel blogs abou...
Computing knowledge - Nova Spivack on Wolfram|Alpha
I didn’t quite get Wolfram|Alpha when Stephen Wolfram wrote about it. Nova Spivack has a long article about Wolfram|Alpha following a demo that sheds a lot more light. In a nutshell, Wolfram|Alpha...
Web as platform: Services for protein function analysis
Image via Wikipedia Distributed; check. Function Analysis; check. Network; check. That’s always a good start, but there’s more than just words to like about FuncNet. FuncNet is an open platform fo...
Unleashing a flood of discussion
Ever wondered about the power of the internet? Well I bring you exhibit #1. The other day, I was reading a presentation by Ian Davis of Talis on the Semantic Web. On slide #20, Ian writes “There...
Web as platform: ChemVendor and the chemical web
Image via Wikipedia I have talked before about Assay Depot, which is a web-based assay provisioning portal written in Ruby on Rails (or does it include some bits of Merb now?). From MetaMolecular ...
Genentech open sources Unison
Image by Getty Images via Daylife While on the subject of open and pharma, a bioinform article (sub reqd) tells us about Unison, a protein sequence analysis platform from Genentech that has been re...
Sage: Data from old stomping grounds
When I was at Rosetta Biosoftware, I was exposed to (mostly via others) to a lot of the work that came out of our parent company upstairs, especially the work of Eric Schadt. It looks like some of...
When molecules go viral
Image by Shevralay via Flickr What happens when a compound goes viral? I am sure you’ve thought about this many times. For the 2 of you not on FriendFeed, I point you to a post by Antony Williams...
Join a startup
Every other day you read a post lamenting the state of “science” careers, and almost always that is synonymous with a career that points to a tenure-track academic position. There is a lot of frus...
Funding science. It’s important
A second post where I am going to shamelessly channel a post by Joe Landman. In On dynamical systems and climatology Joe Landman ends with the following (emphasis mine) I am not arguing for or aga...
Paying attention to simulation
Thinking a lot about the role of computing and informatics in modern science. As I like reminding people, that while many put me in the “bioinformatics” category, my training is in molecular simul...
Man Machine
Kevin Kelly has a new post on the Two strands of connectionism. Essentially he writes about connections between people, the social networks we are all part of, enabled by machines, but primarily d...
Man Machine
Kevin Kelly has a new post on the Two strands of connectionism. Essentially he writes about connections between people, the social networks we are all part of, enabled by machines, but primarily d...
Microblogging finds its way into PLoS
Image by mndoci via Flickr At ScienceOnline09 we had some great sessions on Blogging without a Blog and one on Social Networks in Science. A common theme, microblogging, specifically Twitter and F...
Microblogging finds its way into PLoS
Image by mndoci via Flickr At ScienceOnline09 we had some great sessions on Blogging without a Blog and one on Social Networks in Science. A common theme, microblogging, specifically Twitter and F...
One more podcast is in the can
Stealing a line from Leo is always good. Just uploaded Episode 10 of Coast to Coast Bio, our longest episode yet, and sans any spirits Doing the podcast is a blast, perhaps the most fun I’ve had d...
One more podcast is in the can
Stealing a line from Leo is always good. Just uploaded Episode 10 of Coast to Coast Bio, our longest episode yet, and sans any spirits Doing the podcast is a blast, perhaps the most fun I’ve had d...
Data distribution and versioning
Image by matthewsim via FlickrSharing your changes is a great post on some of the advantages of using Git (or any distributed version control system). Rich Apodaca has an even more interesting pos...
Data distribution and versioning
Image by matthewsim via FlickrSharing your changes is a great post on some of the advantages of using Git (or any distributed version control system). Rich Apodaca has an even more interesting pos...
Matchmaking clinical trials style
Image via WikipediaShahid Shah had a post about TrialX the other day, which made me a little curious about the site and its goals. The TrialX tagline is Enabling patients to find new treatments (an...
Matchmaking clinical trials style
Image via WikipediaShahid Shah had a post about TrialX the other day, which made me a little curious about the site and its goals. The TrialX tagline is Enabling patients to find new treatments (an...
Living software
Today I read one of the best blog posts I have read in a while. I could relate to it as a consumer, as a wannabe programmer, but perhaps most importantly as someone who enjoyed product management....
Living software
Today I read one of the best blog posts I have read in a while. I could relate to it as a consumer, as a wannabe programmer, but perhaps most importantly as someone who enjoyed product management....
Chunking up visualization
Image via WikipediaTechnology Review has an article about visualization software specifically designed for big data. In recent years we have seen trends towards algorithms and methods designed tow...
Chunking up visualization
Image via WikipediaTechnology Review has an article about visualization software specifically designed for big data. In recent years we have seen trends towards algorithms and methods designed tow...
download, mirror, fork
One of my favorite sessions at ScienceOnline’09 was the one on Semantic Web in Science moderated by John Wilbanks. In some ways this was the most traditional session at the event, but it worked, s...
download, mirror, fork
One of my favorite sessions at ScienceOnline’09 was the one on Semantic Web in Science moderated by John Wilbanks. In some ways this was the most traditional session at the event, but it worked, s...
Rethinking Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaYesterday, I changed an opinion. Andrew Su led a session at ScienceOnline’09 on using wikis for annotation, specifically around the Genes Wiki project. In the past I have been ...
Coast to Coast Bio starts a new year
When we started Coast to Coast Bio last year, we weren’t sure if we’d make it to episode 5, but thanks to great feedback and having quite the blast recording it we’re going strong. The first episo...
Of models and Black Swans
Image via WikipediaInteresting discussion on Friendfeed about Black Swans and models (both scientific and financial). Teed off by a post by Ashutosh Jogelekar, this discussion is an interesting on...
The “just in time” web
Might have said I am going to slow down in the annual kick off post, but everyone knows that local environment and global environments are not the same thing. Plus, have been thinking about this a ...
Apparently we’re over a week into 2009
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough — Albert Einstein I agree with the second part of that quote. Usually comes while I am busy violating the first part. And to prove that, I am ...
Coast to Coast Bio 8 and a screencast from Ensembl
A new podcast, the final episode for 2008, of Coast to Coast Bio is now available. You can always subscribe on iTunes. Up on Bioscreencast, you can see a screencast providing an overview of the ne...
And one more year is done
2008 has come and is almost gone and it’s time to shut down bbgm to do some housecleaning while all of you are out for the holidays, except Pierre of course, who will be writing some cool code. De...
And one more year is done
2008 has come and is almost gone and it’s time to shut down bbgm to do some housecleaning while all of you are out for the holidays, except Pierre of course, who will be writing some cool code. De...
Coast to Coast Bio 8 and a screencast from Ensembl
A new podcast, the final episode for 2008, of Coast to Coast Bio is now available. You can always subscribe on iTunes. Up on Bioscreencast, you can see a screencast providing an overview of the ne...
From merging rivals to code repositories
Image via WikipediaInteresting development today. Ruby on Rails and Merb have decided to merge rather than duke it out in the blogosphere as they had been doing? What does it mean? Well, Ruby and...
DSLs and scientific programming
I hope we can talk about this on Coast to Coast Bio tonight. In my exploration of proper programming and Ruby, I’ve seen a lot of discussion around Domain Specific Languages, and to try and unders...
DSLs and scientific programming
I hope we can talk about this on Coast to Coast Bio tonight. In my exploration of proper programming and Ruby, I’ve seen a lot of discussion around Domain Specific Languages, and to try and unders...
Web as platform: Twittering for stocks and proteins
Image via WikipediaContinuing to clear out my inbox, aka my brain, before I shut down for the year. The other day I was listening to Technometria, with Eric Norlin as the special guest. The episod...
More on interfaces
Image via WikipediaThe other day, I blogged about better browser performance and capabilities. Today, Alexander Griekspoor tweeted that while he agreed with my arguments on the backend, too much f...
More on interfaces
Image via WikipediaThe other day, I blogged about better browser performance and capabilities. Today, Alexander Griekspoor tweeted that while he agreed with my arguments on the backend, too much f...
Rewarding the analysts
Science today rewards only those who collect and distribute data. There is no reward for those who organise the data and theorise based on it — Sydney Brenner Those words are from a talk at the In...
Rewarding the analysts
Science today rewards only those who collect and distribute data. There is no reward for those who organise the data and theorise based on it — Sydney Brenner Those words are from a talk at the In...
Episode 7 of Coast to Coast Bio is up
You can find Episode 7 on the Coast to Coast Bio site and on iTunes (search for Coast to Coast Bio)
Linkfest - Dec 15, 2008
Some late year link clearing Let’s start with the news that Sean Eddy has started blogging. Cryptogenomicon is a suitably geeky name for a blog I am looking forward to reading (Sean’s obviously a ...
Linkfest - Dec 15, 2008
Some late year link clearing Let’s start with the news that Sean Eddy has started blogging. Cryptogenomicon is a suitably geeky name for a blog I am looking forward to reading (Sean’s obviously a ...
Web as platorm: The browser as interface
I am not the biggest fan of Flash or Silverlight as web platforms, partly due to the opaqueness of their presence on the web. That said, they remain the best ways to provide rich user experiences,...
Searching for scientific literature
Image via WikipediaOne of those Friendfeed inspired posts. Yesterday, I asked a question on Friendfeed, which has turned into an interesting discussion. The question was simple Does the method us...
Deposit that data folks
Image via WikipediaNautilus writes about a correspondence sent to Nature Methods in which it is reported that the rate of deposition of raw microarray data, in support of publications, was less tha...
Goldman’s pool for drug research
And while we are on the subject of blog posts by Derek Lowe, here’s one where he points to news about Goldman Sachs funding a large pharma company and using a “new” business model (The model involv...
Getting a drug molecule to fit
Image via WikipediaGreat post by Derek Lowe as usual, and about an area of science that I care about deeply. In general, molecular recognition, and specifically, the energetics of drug binding are...
Industry watching: Is this the end?
One wouldn’t have been able to tell looking at the huge Supercomputing booth, but SGI has been struggling for years. The company, whose machines were the mainstay of computational science, especia...
Web as platform: Grumbling about prediction servers … again
I have complained about this before, so am sure I sound like a very broken record by now. Adam Kraut shared an abstract for SelectPro, a structure-based model selection method which uses an energy...
Big data meet tech
For the longest time, I’ve hoped that the tech world would see the beauty of science, and the complexity of modern biology. A lot of the material that makes it into tech blogs is futuristic, alarm...
Young scientists and video
Was futzing around YouTube and ran into a few videos (science/biotech related) that seem to be produced by students. Love it!!!
Science Commons - Making the web work for science
“Scientists are the ultimate remixers” Those are words in a new video released by Science Commons. The video aims to highlight the Science Commons mission and why a scientific commons is important...
Science Big, Science Connected - The video
You’ve seen the slides. Here is the video. Chris Lasher has also made the video(s) available on Vimeo. The video is available under a CC-BY license by Chris Lasher Related articles by Zemanta ...
Video of my talk at VA Tech
You’ve seen the slides. Here is the video. Chris Lasher has also made the video(s) available on Vimeo. The video is available under a CC-BY license by Chris Lasher Related articles by Zemanta ...
Github and Cheminformatics
Egon and Rich are really using Github and pushing it in the cheminformatics community. The cool part about it all is how they are using Github, not just for open source code projects, but also to ...
Diversification
Over the last couple of years, some of the similarities in the goals of people doing business intelligence or quantitative trading, and a number of life science computational techniques or data min...
Link clearinghouse Dec 4, 2008
Image via WikipediaA bunch of links to share. Too busy and tired to really think about blogging. Going to spend what energy I have on some Rails stuff. My good friend Damian reports that Eric Dre...
What one information junkie wants
I love listening to podcasts when I fly. As I type this, am listening to October’s Semantic Web Gang, where they are talking about Twine. My feelings about Twine are mixed. The concept and, at le...
All about aging (or not)
Image by mndoci via FlickrI have often wondered about our obsession with aging, from the need to use skin products to develop drugs and vitamins that prevent aging. I am actually quite fine with r...
Does my sequence have a new homolog?
Image via WikipediaHere’s an interesting service I discovered during a snoop on the web. PDBalert is a web-based system that alerts users as soon as a pdb structure with homology to a protein of ...
Context and puzzles revisited
Some time ago I wrote about how more data does not necessarily mean you get slower, channeling Jeff Jonas’ analogy to jigsaw puzzles. He extends some of those thoughts in a recent post on how oberv...
Identity-fication
As some of you know, I am a fan of Larry Lessig’s presentation style. One of the many speakers who has been insired by that style is Dick Hardt, but I am not talking about his presentation style, ...
Almost back
Not much posting lately, or for that matter a podcast. Busy at Supercomputing 08 where I was able to have some great meetings and meet some interesting people. Anyhows, will appear out of the wood...
Science Big, Science Connected
The first attempt at distilling some of my thoughts on Big Data and the Networked Future of Science. Thanks to Chris Lasher for the invite to speak at VA Tech. I had fun, although in my jetlagged...
Coast to Coast Bio #3 is now available
Dropped the latest podcast earlier today. Heavy discussion around the Saunders principle and the tension between bioinformaticians and bench scientists
Search, Bayesian filters and the IF statement
On episode 28 the Stack Overlow podcast Joel Spolsky talked about something Adam Bosworth mentioned to him after Bosworth moved from Microsoft to Google. Apparently Bosworth said something along t...
Web as platform: Where are the biomedical APIs?
Programmable Web is now tracking 1000 APIs in it’s directory. That’s quite an achievement. The blog post specifically points to a number of APIs considered disruptive, including APIs from ebay, A...
Of word clouds and speaker bios
Next week, I head to Virgina Tech to give a talk as part of the Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (GBCB) guest lecture series. I think Chris Lasher needs a stern talking to about ...
Data to rule them all
The current meme seems to be data to rule them all A bunch of blog posts out there discussing the importance of data, all pretty much screaming out for the importance of open data. First a couple ...
Coast to Coast Bio episode 2
So far so good. Episode 2 of Coast to Coast Bio is now up. More riffing on matters somewhere in the continuum between biology and programming. Also available via iTunes
Another reason pharmacovigilance is required
Image via WikipediaI am not a lawyer, and while I have some opinions and some knowledge of FDA guidelines, I want to use the current pharma story du jour to highlight something that we need to do. ...
Educational rantings
Image by mndoci via FlickrI should start with a disclaimer. My studies in the US have been limited to graduate school, so a lot is hearsay and gut feeling. Fred Wilson writes about hacking educati...
What’s scientific data all about?
Interesting post by Frank Gibson on the Triumvirate of Scientific Data. He postulates that there are three properties of scientific data that are fundamental to the understanding of the curation, s...
Freebase gets a new look and introduces Acre
Freebase just had a major update, both cosmetically and in terms of features. Not sure when this got in, but Kingsley Idehen notes that Freebase is finally on the linked data web, one of the compl...
“Glue”ing the web
Lots of chatter about Adaptive Blue’s Glue this week. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while, because it does one thing in particular that really resonates at this end. First, a quick intr...
Changing habits with technology
Lots to blog about, so I will just put up something that came to me in the flight from LA to SEA that I took earlier today. First time this sort of occurred to me was a couple of weeks ago at work...
Back to podcasting. Introducing Coast to Coast bio
For a long time Hari and I have been talking about doing a podcast. We finally went ahead and started one. Coast to Coast Bio is a podcast that will evolve over time, but it’s a couple of geeks,...
Getting RESTive
I am getting frustrated by the number of people calling any HTTP-based interface a REST API. Those words come from the man who put REST on the map, one Roy Fielding in a bit of a rant against what ...
The future of simulation
Shirley picks up on a topic near and dear to my heart, physics-based simulation, specifically a couple of questions What are high impact biomedical arenas that offer exciting challenges for physic...
Have a problem: Build a web resource
Via a post on Hacker News I ran into the Tulane School of Medicine Student Portal. As one of the developers writes on Hacker News Our goal is ‘making med school easier, one less click at a time’....
Blog away
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeNick Carr points to an article by Andrew Sullivan that sheds some very interesting insights into blogging, points that are even more important for scientific writin...
Web as platform: A web of data services
The New York Times just released an API, one for Campaign Finance. Marshall Kirkpatrick calls this significant because “steps like this are going to prove key if big media is to thrive in the futu...
Accelerators: It’s all about the programming
Image via WikipediaMy favorite source of hardware acceleration commentary returns to that subject. Joe asks My question now is, given the intent of Intel in this market, will Larrabee be able to ge...
In signals we trust
Bret Taylor has posted some graphics that he presented at the Future of Web Apps conference. The slides seem to explore the concept of signals in a virtual river of information, i.e. Friendfeed. W...
Of microbes and centralization
The National Institutes of Health this week awarded more than $14 million to informatics projects intended to support the Human Microbiome Project, which aims to take a genomic tally of microbes th...
Fundamentals
Image by mndoci via FlickrWanted to touch upon a couple of topics that sort of play together in my head. I have always considered education a fundamental right, and considered a quality, well-roun...
Your personal health: Free means education
One more post today. Russ Altman talks about how the cost of genotyping is asymptoting to free (eerie parallels to Chris Anderson’s Free). The post comes on the heels of the launch of Complete G...
Your personal health: My fair PHR
Image via WikipediaRecent visits to various medical facilities have been accompanied by filling up a lot of long forms, essentially filling up the same information. It is highly inefficient, and f...
Semantic randomness
Image via WikipediaVery interesting Semantic Web Gang from September, and a rather interesting panel I should add. It is no secret that I am a big believer in the Semantic Web and other “semantic”...
Driving adoption of new methods
Image via WikipediaVery often you hear about new methods, often more computationally expensive, that are pegged as improvements to existing commonly used techniques. Many a “Google killer” comes t...
Coworking and research
Bora writes about coworking and telecommuting. I’ve been wondering if coworking will ever catch on in the life sciences and what the models might be. It is one thing to do it as an informatician ...
Embracing change … and Japan
Last night, or was it this morning, I ranted about the unwillingness of bench scientists to try and make an effort to understand a little bit about the software being written to make their lives ea...
Midweek rant #201
At a presentation that someone I know, a software developer, gave to an “omics” group, it dawned on this person that almost no one in there (outside of the software folk) knew what a schema was....
Thinking about “thinkism”
Image via WikipediaSay what you like about Kevin Kelly, he has the ability to write material that makes you think. In a (no pun intended) post called Thinkism, Kelly makes a very effective argumen...
When more is easier
Image via WikipediaMore goodness from Jeff Jonas. In The Fast Last Puzzle Piece, he talks about how the notion that more data = slower system is not true. The analogy he uses is that of a jigsaw ...
The web as platform: We can do more
Image by 5348 Franco via FlickrI have had my differences with Tim O’Reilly over the years on certain issues, but his keynote at Web 2.0 Expo resonated with me at many levels. I am writing this pos...
Industry watching: Tripos acquires Pharsight
One piece of news that caught me by surprise was Tripos’ acquisition of Pharsight. Most of us know Tripos as a cheminformatics/molecular modeling focused company which has been through some tough t...
Signal identification
Another great post by Jeff Jonas. The first line says it all It is risky business to use risk assessment systems which produce alarms at a pace faster than the organization can evaluate and handle...
Computing Everywhere
Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at Web 2.0 Expo touched upon this. I have written about this before as well, and Nova Spivack adds his voice to a trend that you can call uqbiquitous computing, ambient comp...
Assay Depot launches
Assay Depot, a virtual marketplace that I’ve blogged about before has formally launched AssayDepot.com. I’ve always like the of a company that is completely virtual and acts like a broker betwe...
Software development orgs
Image via Wikipedia As software-development organizations respond to shifting industry trends, they will need to make strategic decisions about which of these types they want to be. Only when an or...
Interfacial phenomena
Zooming interfaces are cool. This week I have had a chance to see Zoomii in action, a Microsoft Surface, and of course, I use the multitouch zooming of the iphone quite regularly. In an interview ...
MIA?
No, contrary to popular belief no aliens are involved in my longest blog silence in a long time. Thanks to a hectic road trip, mostly at Web 2.0 Expo, haven’t had much of a chance to write about a...
Friends and feedy thoughts
I hope Bret and co are paying attention. I’ve heard people say that Friendfeed is too noisy, that they don’t get the value, etc. The tech world has the unique ability to make anything too noisy a...
Your personal health: 23andme v2
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown Did 23andme just cut prices? Update: Apparently they did A new blog post suggests that they’ve dropped prices to $399 (unless I am being completely dense and th...
Self Assembly: Wikification
Image via Wikipedia I love wikis. From the time I was exposed to them as part of software development efforts to Wikipedia (where I make little changes every now and them) and Citizendium, to more...
Alternate Views
Just futzing around with Dipity. Here is an alternative to your normal list based RSS feed and fits in with the mood of the visualization theme earlier on Friendfeed Dipity first caught my attent...
Dipity Timeline Created
Nano-fications
Image by St Stev via Flickr Over the last 14 years, I have flirted with nanotechnology at three different times; during my Masters in India, during the initial part of my PhD, and a couple of years...
Genetics, Evo-devo and Spore
What are the things that evolution has at its disposal to define a creature, to mix and match the parts, and eventually come up with a unique organism that’s going to live its life and try to repr...
Bioinformatics as mashup
bioinformatics: acquiring, collating and rearranging information already available elsewhere? That is from a Tweet by Neil. My reaction was somthing along the lines of “boy that sounds like the...
Scientific Identity
I have been thinking a lot about distributed lately and what it means for scientists. This was fueled by a bunch of things, including the recent news about OAuth, and discussions around social net...
The ‘Ubiquitous’ web
Image via Wikipedia All of you know about it already, but I shall happily add to the noise. Last evening I had one of those “Holy S**t” moments. Was sitting in a coffee shop, catching up with the...
Peering into PLoS One comment stats
Image via Wikipedia I was one of the lucky few who was given access to a dump of “social” statistics for PLoS One (my term). The data were given to us to analyze as we please, to glean from them w...
Execute
Organizations that sit tight tend to get verry comfortable with sitting, and they don’t move when they need to move. They want proof that the direction is the right direction, they study it, consid...
