Another school year begins

Ah, the wafting aromatic waves of beer and cardboard boxes could only mean one thing: the kids are back in town. Here are a few minor updates on my end of things (major for me, minor for readers, I suppose)...

Mendeley sadness
My schedule has become too packed and unpredictable to keep up with the Mendeley work, so I decided to leave my Community Liaison job (on good terms). I kept thinking, "As soon as I get over this next time crunch, I'll be ready to really give Mendeley the attention it deserves." But, those crunches just kept coming and I don't see them becoming any less crunchy in the near term. The folks there are great, the product is great, and I really wish I had the time to work on it more. I expect really big things out of that group, and will continue to sing their praises. Okay, maybe not sing. Limericks? Nah. Too many syllables in all the keywords ("There once was a bibliographic... shit, ran out of syllables already").

My Project/Thesis/Thing
I've begun running some of the experiments that I've taken lead on (I don't want to say they're 'my' projects because so much feedback has gone into the process that, like all good experiments, I don't think one person deserves all the credit). I would go into more detail, but you know how it is in research and especially FDA/clinical trial situations. Still, these are 'mah babies' and so far things are looking really good. Now to get to the data! Big thanks to Jessica (my 'med school minion') for putting up with my odd schedule and all the great work. Hrm, I could use another DNI contributor or two...

On the topic of putting together kick-ass experiments, I've been meaning to post that there is a whole field out there that many scientists are completely unaware of called "User Experience", or UX. UX is kinda an amalgamation of user interface, HCI, psychology, feedback, and design that looks at how all those fields converge into the subjective experience of the user. Fascinating stuff, though more on the 'web design' end of the spectrum, and I've been really loving the bits and pieces I've been coming across. This field is set to explode with the continually expanding emphasis being put on web apps, mobile apps, and even OSes in general. Which brings me to another nice tidbit of knowledge.

2 copies of Windows 7 for $30 (for students)

Yeah, right! No, really! Thinking of getting a new PC, but wanna wait for Windows 7? Don't want to reinstall your system halfway through the semester just play with all the fun new built in toys? (Shuddup Mac people. some of us prefer a different flavor of Kool Aid.) Well, you'll love this.

Join IEEE as a student for $30 (1-year membership), and get access to their MSDNAA software library for free. This includes the Windows 7 RTM version. RTM? That sounds like a beta. Nope, RTM stands for 'Release to Manufacturer'. Buy a PC on Oct 23, and this is same version of Windows 7 that will be shipping on it. Not beta, not RC. I've gone through this process, and it works as advertised. Buy the membership, wait about 7 days for the MSDNAA specific email to show up with your login and password (mine took about half that long, maybe because I used my university email address), and go get em, tiger.

Only the Business versions (32 and 64-bit) is up as of this posting (don't waste your time with the RC, and Ultimate isn't much better than Business, unless you need the language packs, which I think can be purchased separately). Supposedly, the 'in place' upgrading has undergone some major upgrades, and Vista users may not even need to do a clean install, though I always recommend it. Mine installed fine - took about 30 minutes and activated without issue.

Here are the linkies:
Source of the info: SlickDeals
IEEE description: here

Data Visualization
I plan to add more on this in the future, but an interesting (free) iPhone app to check out is Roambi, which basically allows you to upload 'data' to their site, and then spit is back in some really visually pleasing, interactive displays on the iPhone.
Try the app's built in demos for a better idea.

Slow goin' and syncing madness

Just a quick note (again) that things over here are changing, which always puts the strain on DNI. Right now my big issue is that all my email is being aggregated by GMail with another account, so I have to log in and out to get to my rss feeds and DNI mail. Plus, a little side project knocked out this weekend + the beginning of the week. Sooooo... sorry about the lag. Also, this Wednesday through next Wednesday will be a brief break, since I'll be preparing and presenting my prelim. Just giving fair warning.

I'm thinking of moving to Thunderbird 3 on a USB key for email, then Neuvasync for iPhone contact/calendar syncing. I'd have a TrueCrypt encrypted file to contain it all. The big problem is that TB, and all email clients for that matter, can only move messages to a single folder, which is picked up by GMail as a tag. In GMail you can have multiple tags, and I would like to be able to move seamlessly between TB and GMail. Poopy. Someone needs to make a GMail tagging add-on for TB. Anyhoo....

Also, if you have a LinkedIn account, there is a BCI group that you might find worth checking out.

Two new Mendeley tools! Part 2

The second, and arguably the most awesome tool new to Mendeley is.... Me!
(Tool? Get it? I'm so punny!)

I was waiting for this to be posted on the Mendeley blog before saying anything, but I will be joining the Mendeley team as a Community Liaison. Victor Henning and I came up with the idea when we met for coffee during his US east coast tour. We thought that designing a reference managing program/system should really be driven by the potential users, and that this was almost a full time job in itself. Like most problems, this one could be solved with minions. Or 'Mendions', if you prefer.

What does this mean to you, dear readers?

1) First, yes I will be mentioning cool Mendeley items. And yes, I am a paid consultant, so, depending on how you want to see it, I am a little biased. BUT...

2) I am working with Mendeley because I think the program has significant potential and the folks there have the vision, resources, and talent to do great things. Also, I can't believe that after leaving academia in 2001, I came back in 2005 to find almost no change in the tools for managing information. Seriously, EndNote looks the exact same as when I used it on my Power Mac 9500/120 running System 7. Sad.

3) My job is not to 'sell'. My job is to get feedback from users, librarians, and labs on how to make Mendeley work the way they do. There is a nice feedback and bug reporting system in place, so the Community Liaisons are more the 'big picture' folks and web presence crew. Yes, we'll be 'promoting' the program and web service but, like I said, I'm doing this because I do think it's a great program. So, if you have any insights you can provide, check the feedback system (it's very easy to use) and let me of any other the other CLs know! If you think I'm being unfair or too 'rah-rah', call me on it.

I'm really excited about this, and after dealing with all the papers and other literature I've amassed with my thesis project and DNI, I have a vested interest in helping make Mendeley awesome.

Two new Mendeley tools! Part 1

Today: The awesome tool. Tomorrow: The total tool.

One of my suggestions to Mendeley has been put into action, and it totally rocks. It's a very simple idea: a bookmarklet that you can click when you are in PubMed or IEEEExplore that directly imports the publication into your paper library (they added a number of other sites, like Google Scholar, too). Well, it's a reality, and it totally rocks. Just one word of caution. There is still some wonkiness with DOI vs PMID queries that they are aware of, so just be aware of that. Once that is ironed out, I may switch Super Paper Friday over to be a shared Mendeley library. Here's the info, from the source:

It’s here! The Mendeley browser “bookmarklet” allows you to import documents from websites and academic databases into your Mendeley library with a single click. At the moment, the following sites are supported: ACM Portal, Amazon.com, arXiv.org, CiteSeer, IEEE Xplore, IngentaConnect, Google Book Search, Google Scholar, PubMed, NASA Astrophysics Data System, and ScienceDirect. We’ll be adding support for further sites continuously.

This is how it works: Say you’re on PubMed and you’ve just discovered an interesting paper. Now, all you need to do is click the “Import to Mendeley” bookmark in your browser - Mendeley does the rest: The paper is automatically added to your Mendeley Web library with metadata, abstract and (if available) the PDF. All of this happens in the background, so you don’t have to leave the PubMed page you’re on.

It also works on search results pages, so you can import multiple documents at the same time - a small pop-up allows you to choose which ones.

Adding a new feed (or 20)!

So, if you have followed/subscribed to the RSS feeds, you know that they are updated several times/day (yes, I am actually doing that manually, and yes, I do read what I mark, except papers, though I read all abstracts). You probably also noticed that I mark a decent amount of stuff related to data analysis junkie related items under the BCI feed, including hard drive tech, CPU updates, and general organization/efficiency stories.

To better serve my dear, dear readers and and reduce the chance of myself developing a schizotypic disorder when trying to find material, I am going to restructure the whole feed setup sometime within the next week.

Site feed:
If you just let your browser or reader autodetect feeds, this is what you get. It is only stories I actually write. If that's all you want, then cool beans. But, there is much, much more available through the below feeds!

Starred items:
Broader implications, greater importance across 2+ fields or specifically to my research/lab/general situation/jobs/etc. This will include some papers, but not all, some tech, but not much (and no more multiple tagging of the same stories on different sites when one happens to add a small detail I find interesting - those will go in my private feeds). I'm hoping this will be a lower volume feed with greater signal-to-noise. High blog topic correlation with low variance is the aim.

Shared items:
My posts and strictly BCI related news items. Other blogs can add Blogger feeds as drop in items, and in general, the 'Shared' designation is meant to be the most topical to the readers. Now it should be. This will include NO papers, only media coverage of BCIs, NISs, BMIs, prosthetics, neural implants, some EEG/EOG/ECoG/MRI, and robotics/material science/neuroethics/neuroinformatics. Tech items will be limited to major, and only major items, like significant architecture changes, wireless transfer, CCD/CMOS advances, and new power/battery tech.

Tag: Neuroscience and Bioengineering
These items are specifically neuroscience related, and will include all papers. Papers will be purged each week in the Super Paper Friday post, leaving only media articles referencing them.

Tag: Science Policy and Perspectives
Political, social and generally interesting science bits. A paper might slip in here or there, but not many.

Tag: Video and Audio
I love the io9 sci-fi site, but they tend to post 20 YouTube clips in a single story, which brings most browsers to a crawl. This feed will contain only video and audio items. This way YOU can enable a script blocker or Flash blocker to read stories as usual, and then quickly scroll through these items. Since there aren't many, maybe 5 per week, you should be able to find stuff fast as long as you don't wait 3 months to look for it.

Tag: Organization and Efficiency
This will be the most 'eclectic' feed, covering data organization (physical and virtual), working space design, neat-o desks, software (like Mendeley and Firefox), notetaking, and other random bits to make life easier.

Tag: Technology
All the techy goodness that I find rockin'.

Tag: Education
Items related to education/PhD life/books/notetaking/etc.

Other feeds and tags may follow, but I think this covers the bulk of the material on the site.

A tool and a shout out

First, since Google has released Mobile Sync for iPhones and WinMo devices, I thought I would point out that there are still some annoying bugs. I'm probably going to try out Nuevasync instead, which is more mature (still free, but doesn't do undesirable things like remove pics from contacts, etc.) Thought I would let people know about the option...

And thanks to the interviewing students this past week for a fun time (especially the parts I remember from Friday night). I don't usually say this, but it was a great group, so hopefully we'll see a bunch of you back here in August/September. And hey, it only took 3 Roomba runs and 2 wet Swiffer passes to clean the place, and nothing important was destroyed, meaning the night was a win from my perspective.

Get it while it's hot!

New version of Mendeley is out (0.6.0) - a big rewrite for the folks there - so go grab it. MUCH snappier, much more refined, nicer looking, easier to use, etc. Overall, a very nice improvement. Word of caution - I haven't had a chance to confirm that my database corrupting bug has been squashed, and the file renaming can still cause the issue I posted about earlier (easy enough to remedy). I'll probably try for a full migration later this week.

Speaking of Mendeley, I'll be meeting with one of the creators this weekend, which should be fun. I'm also meeting next Monday with the university task force for enhancing Brown's electronic resources, so hopefully I will learn about some bits and pieces that slipped by my radar. I'll be preparing a rundown of all the various options out there, so once that is compiled, I will post it here.

Sorry about the lack of updates - duty calls...

Googling with your RSS

Google will be adding rss feeds for custom searches, according to some insider types. This has the potential to be really, really useful, especially if they roll Google Scholar into the mix. I like to use GS as an adjunct to PubMed searches, due to the completely different way that Google figures out the connections between papers.

Other nice uses include watching your favorite sites for changes, regardless of whether they support rss, keeping track of news items on the most popular news sites by narrowing the date, tracking prices for new toys on Product Search, and probably many other uses I can't think of right now. The ability to create feeds from searches has been part of Microsoft and Yahoo's search engines, but it will be interesting to see how Google integrates it into the Googleverse. More importantly, these types of repeated sources of information inspire you to actually craft a good search, so even if you don't use it in the long term, you're likely to find something new and interesting while you set it up.