I really enjoyed exploring mashups and used the list in Allan Cho’s article
http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla28/c07-007.pdf to choose from. I began with Biowizard http://biowizard.com which uses NCBI Entrez as its application programming interface (API). Users are able to customize a personal profile, share research interests, upload articles from Pubmed to share and comment on other users’ choices. Photos can be uploaded and users can join groups and chat live with others.
I registered with Biowizard and submitted an article chosen from a Pubmed search on Clinical Librarians. This appeared in the New Submissions after a few seconds and is available for others to comment on or discuss, gaining votes as they do so. I then searched the site and retrieved it, so the system works ! I checked this morning to find 24 votes had been allocated to my submission, so there is more than a little interest in it.
Gwen likened this aspect of Biowizard to a ’virtual journal club’, which would be one use for it.
Try searching for my submitted article and give it some more votes !
I then had a look at HEALTHMAP http://healthmap.org I was really impressed with this ! There are many tools incorporated in HEALTHMAP, Google maps, Pubmed, WHO, Wikipedia, Centers for Disease control and prevention, it’s API is Googlemaps. The medical/public health sites mash with Googlemaps to show the prevalence of disease world-wide. Diseases are listed, most prevalent first (cholera!) you can click on a disease to load it onto the map. An information button links to Wikipedia, Pubmed, WHO etc for an explanation of that disease. You can check alerts by country, which are fed by Newspapers and news sites like BBC.
A look at the whole world with all the diseases loaded on could help with your choice of holiday destination ! The UK looks very dodgy, whereas France is clear – do we believe this !!!
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3 comments:
Hi Sue
I found the article that you recommended on Biowizard and I placed a vote for it. I set myself an account up and added you to my friends. I tried to send you a message but it came up with 'this feature is not yet available' what a shame.
I liked Gwen's idea of using it as a virtual journal club.
Sandra
Hi Sue,
I also registered for Biowizard and found the article you recommended. This took some doing though, as when I tried searching for "clinical librarians" within Biowizard (as opposed to within PubMed), the list of articles that appeared seemed to bear little relevance to librarians! I found it in the end through browsing for 'clinical - other'.
I'm not sure what I was doing wrong here - I'm probably missing something obvious.
Claire
Hi Sue,
Thanks for checking out my article on mashups. We're still very early in the stages of Web 2.0 technologies. Mashups are in many ways the essence of Web 2.0 - collective intelligence, integrating and blending in different technologies into single programs, and most of all, user-centred.
The drawback, unfortunately, is too much information. "Information-mess" as I like to put it. You're doing a lot of searching, but not necessarily doing a lot of "finding."
Allan
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