Laika’s MedLibLog on the Longlist of the Dutch Bloggies!

Laika’s MedLibLog is nominated for the Dutch Bloggies-awards. The Dutch Bloggies is a  yearly contest by the foundation “Dutch Bloggies” that awards weblogs from Dutch-speaking regions.

Besides the overall Most Popular Weblog and Best Microblog, there are longlists for 15 categories. There are 10 blogs on each longlist. Laika’s Medliblog is nominated for best blog in category Best health & sport weblogs.

These are the blogs in this category:

Ajax Life | Catenaccio.nl | De Hardloper | Gezondheid.blog.nl | Green Jump | Laika’s MedLibLog | Marijn Fietst | Medicalfacts | SuikerWijzer | Zorg Beter Maken

I do feel like Tom Thumb amidst the giants. Apart that this site serves a small niche, it is hosted by one person in spare time on a WordPress domain. I’m getting a little intimidated by the professional looks and frequent updates of some of the self hosted blogs. But being nominated is already a great honor.

After publication of the shortlists the final winners will be announced in “het Paard van Troje” in The Hague, December 1th.

Nice to know: Colleague Librarian and fellow blogger Edwin Mijnsbergen (http://twitter.com/zbdigitaal) of the Wonderful blog ZB Digitaal was previous year’s winner in the category Education (see his blogpost)

All longlists can be viewed on http://www.dutchbloggies.nl/2009/?e=16

A better overview (without the need for clicking) is presented at JeroenMirck (link), the blog of Jeroen Mirck, journalist and chairman of the jury.

NRC-next blog (a blog of a Dutch newspaper) -nominated four times itself- also refers to the contest here.

The Volkskrant mentions the Dutch Bloggies nominations here

The deliberation of the jury. Originally there were 5000 nominations.

BlogWorld Expo [SOTB]: Two Additional Videos

Today I learned there were two more videos realted to the BlogWorld Expo, that I shouldn’t withhold you.

First, the ABC News Covered the Medblogger Track At Blog World Expo. Here is an interview with Dr. Val Jones with Dave Lucas of ABC.

The video “Medical Bloggers On ABC News: Empowering Patients With Accurate Information” is summarized as follows at her blog Get Better Health:

….”Dave Lucas is tired of all the false health information that fills his email inbox each day. He’s very relieved that there are physicians, nurses, and patient advocates “swimming against the tide” of pseudoscience and misleading health information online. Today Dave and I discussed how people can find accurate and potentially life-saving health information through peer-reviewed medical blogs, thanks to the health blogger code of ethics (administered by MedPage Today)”.

Another interview was with Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and author of Running a Hospital. Paul participated in a panel discussion as part of the Medblogger Track (co-sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and MedPage Today). Because the video is barely audible, I just mention his main statements (highlighted in red in the video shown here at the JNJ Health Channel):

• Paul writes his blogposts without any prior permission or approval process
• It is quicker to fix a mistake on a blog, than it is in traditional media
• Biggest regret is responding to sarcastic or hostile comments in kind instead of staying above the fray

Medical Bloggers On ABC News: Empowering Patients With Accurate Information

Blue Ribbon Blog Rally for Free Speech Online; een Blauw Lint voor Vrijheid van Meningsuiting

I have never been a person who would stoop to self-censoring and I never will be. I’d rather not write at all if I have to stop being frank and honest in my words. -Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi

Thanks to T at Notes of an Anesthesioboist for getting this going, a group of bloggers is holding a blog rally in support of Roxana Saberi, who is spending her birthday on a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she has been incarcerated for espionage. According to NPR, “The Iranian Political Prisoners Association lists hundreds of people whose names you would be even less likely to recognize: students, bloggers, dissidents, and others who, in a society that lacks a free press, dare to practice free expression.”

Hearing reports like these has prompted us to do a ribbon campaign. Blue for blogging.

Please consider placing a blue ribbon on your blog or website this week in honor of the journalists, bloggers, students, and writers who are imprisoned in Evin Prison, nicknamed “Evin University”, and other prisons around the world, for speaking and writing down their thoughts. Also, please ask others to join our blog rally.

Omid, incidentally, means hope in Farsi. Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi is dead. Hope has to live on.

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Text is from Notes of an Anesthesioboist and Paul Levy of Running a hospital

*********************************************************************

I have never been a person who would stoop to self-censoring and I never will be. I’d rather not write at all if I have to stop being frank and honest in my words. -Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi

Omid, incidentally, means hope in Farsi. Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi is dead. Hope has to live on.

T van Notes of an Anesthesioboist heeft ander bloggers opgeroepen om deze week een blauw lint op hun blog te plaatsen. Blauw staat voor bloggen, vrijheid van bloggen wel te verstaan.

De aanleiding is dat de Amerikaans-Iraanse journaliste Roxana Saberi, die beschuldigd wordt van spionage en vastzit in Iran, vandaag haar “verjaardag viert” in een Teheraanse Gevangenis, alwaar ze in hongerstaking is gegaan.

In de Iraanse gevangenis zitten honderden, veel minder bekende mensen gevangen: studenten, bloggers, dissidenten, en anderen die hun vrije mening durfden te uiten in een land dat geen vrije pers toestaat.

In navolging van T wil ik u daarom ook vragen om deze week ook een blauw lint op uw blog of website te plaatsen om alle journalisten, bloggers, studenten, en schrijvers te ondersteunen die gevangen zitten in de Evin gevangenis, ook wel “Evin Universiteit” genoemd, of waar dan ook ter wereld voor het vrij uiten van hun gedachten.

Wilt u ook anderen vragen om aan deze blogrally mee te doen?

Jacqueline.

First Anniversary of this Blog

This week is my one year anniversary.

I would like to thank all my readers for following along with my blog.

Thanks for your encouragements, comments and inspiration.

I’m glad I entered the web 2.0 world, but it would have been empty without you.

I hope you keep connected!

Laika (Jacqueline)

Foto credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlietakesphotos/118424928/

Response From Twitter

What I learned in 2008 (about Web 2.0)

Grand Round is a weekly collection of the best writing in the medical blogosphere. The coming Grand Rounds (February 3rd, 2009), hosted by Not Totally Rad has the following theme:

February is the first anniversary of my blog. Therefore, the loose theme for submissions will be anniversary-related: write about something cool or important that you’ve learned in the past year.

Well, I have learned a lot in the past year. The most profound personal experience was the death of my father. I experienced how it is to loose a beloved, but I also learned that death and grieve can affect people so deeply that it changes their behavior. I now understand this behavior (anger, mental confusion) is a manifestation of deep grief, which is transient and natural. Luckily our body and mind appear very resilient.

I will restrict to another thing I’ve learned: Web 2.0.
Just like the “Samurai Radiologist” I started a blog in February 2008. Thus Laika’s MedLibLog also celebrates its first anniversary.

Useful Web 2.0 tools

This blog was started as a tool to communicate thoughts, new found skills and ideas with other (>150) SPOETNIK course members, Spoetnik being a Learning 2.0 project to encourage library staff to experiment and learn about the new and emerging Internet technologies.

During the library 2.0 course I learned the basics of blogging, chatting, RSS, Podcasts, Wiki’s and social bookmarking. Each week another item was addressed. This learning program had a direct and positive impact. For instance, I could inform my clients how to create a RSS-feed for PubMed searches. By taking RSS-feeds/email alerts to interesting blogs, wiki’s and journals I kept better informed.

Hard to imagine (now) that I hardly new anything about web 2.0 one year ago.

Web 2.0 is not just a set of tools.

In the beginning I considered blogging largely as a selfish activity. It also appeared a lonely activity. As long as we discussed a course assignment there always was an interaction with at least a handful of other participants. But as soon as the program came to an end, I started to write more and more about medicine, EBM and medical library related matter, which didn’t appeal to most of the other course members. I wrote about things that interested me, but the writing would be absolutely useless if nobody would read it. Thus, how to get an audience?

There were I few things I had to learn and there were a few people who gave me a push in the right direction .

• Wowter, who gave feedback to my posts right from the start and who encouraged me to continue blogging, posted a list with 17 tips for beginning bloggers (in Dutch) of how to increase visibility and findability of your blog. I became aware that ‘linking’ to others is what is making the web 2.0 world interconnected.
• Second Dymphie, a Dutch Medical Librarian, encouraged me to start twittering. It took quite a while before I grasped the value of twitter as a networking tool. Twitter is not meant to say “what you do”, but it is a way to share information of any kind. Before you can share it, you first have to find interesting tweeple (people on twitter) and it did take a while before they followed me back (partly because my first tweets weren’t that interesting). Thus I had to learn by trial and error how to become a prolific twitterer.
• Third I read a very interesting blogpost on “I’m not a geek” of Hutch Carpenter called Becoming a web 2.0 jedi, showing a simple but very accurate chart of the ever deeper levels of involvement one can have with Web 2.0 apps and the Web 2.0 ethos, as Hutch calls them. “Down are the lower levels, those of passive involvement, level 2 is giving up little pieces of yourself, while level 3 is a much bigger sharing experience. Share your own life, share your knowledge, share the stuff you find interesting. A big leap for a lot of us used to being more private. May the force be with you.”
  Seeing his post I realized that my journey had been quite different (figure below, made in September 2008). During the Spoetnik course emphasis was given to the tools themselves not to the ways you should use and share them and contribute to others. We skipped the reading of blogs and wiki’s, the lurking on twitter, but started with chatting, RSS and blogging. Although Web 2.0 tools are the basis, Web 2.0 is more an attitude than the usage of tools, it is about sharing information and thoughts.Or as Dean Giustini says it: It is about people.

http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/becoming-a-web-20-jedi/

The Ecosphere of Twitter and blogs.

I also experienced that all web 2.0 tools are not stand-alone tools, but can reinforce each other. This is for instance true for RSS, bookmarking tools , blogs, but also twitter (a microblogging service). A recent post of Sandnsurf (Mike Cadogan) at Life in the fast Lane uses a brilliant ecosystem metaphore to describe the twitter-blogging relationship. He describes the blogging ecosphere, where twitter decomposes information from journal articles and long blog posts into readily digestible information (nutrients and humus). See Figure from his post below (but read his post here for the whole story). Just like the Jedi chart this diagram illustrate exactly what web 2.0 is about.

http://sandnsurf.medbrains.net/2009/01/twitter-essential-blog-nutrient/

Lessons to be learned

I have learned a lot. Am I now a real web 2.0 Jedi?
I’m not sure. In the ecology-model my blog is a young tree, surrounded by many others. But some ecologic dangers are luring.

• The relative success of my blog results in “an abundance of light which results in a pressure to keep producing enough good quality posts”.
• I’ve subscribed to so many RSS-feeds I seldomly read them.
• I have so many twitter-followers (app. 300) that I can’t keep up with all of them as much as I would like to.
• I read so many things, but haven’t got the time to work them out (or I simply forget).
• I find it difficult to separate chaff from wheat. Many blogposts and web 2.0 information are not very accurate and superficial. Furthermore people often echo a subject without careful checking or without adding value.

Or in the words of sandnsurf: the death of a blog can ensue due to excessive exposure and Twittaholism. I hope It will not go in that direction, but I have to figure out a way to coop with the overwhelming amount of information and find a balance. That will be part of my (web 2.0) learning process in 2009.

One other thing:

I forgot to mention one very important experience. During my web 2.0 journey I virtually met many interesting, kind and helpful people from all over the world, from US, UK, Eastern Europe to India and Australia. Closer to home I also ‘met’ many very nice Dutch and Belgian people. I never liked the idea of intentional networking, but in web 2.0 the networks arise spontaneously. In a very natural and gradual way I became a member of a large health and library community and that feels good.

You might also want to read:

• 2008/11/27/:  Blogging after Spoetnik: my experiences presented at the  spoetnik-symposium.
• Embedded in this post is a powerpoint which can also be viewed directly at slideshare (click here). The ppt is in Dutch but has many pictures that speak for itself.

The 2008 Medical Weblog Awards Polls Are Open!

Just a short notice that you can start voting for your favorite finalists in the Medgadget contest for best medical blogs.

You can find all categories here.

I’m in category: “The best new medical weblog“, for which you can vote here.

I guess that my chances of winning are slim, considering the quality of the other blogs. I’ve become a real fan of [1] Sandsnurf of ‘Life in the Fast Lane‘, and I regularly read [2] Science-Based Medicine a good quality team-blog about controversies in the relationship between science and medicine, a subject being close to my heart.

New to me are [3] Medtechinsider, another team-blog (editorial staff of Medical Device Technology and European Medical Device Manufacturer), devoted to covering the medical manufacturing industry and its suppliers. And [4] The New Health Dialogue, a policy blog of the New America Foundation.

But let’s not talk too much about the others, shall we….??!!

I truly hope I have earned your vote. But whether you do vote for me or not, please make sure you get to vote for your favorite in each of 7 categories here.

I’m already thrilled having made it to the short list.

A 2008 Medical Weblog Awards Finalist…..

Some weeks ago I announced that the Medgadget 2008 nomination of the Best Medical Blogs had started.

The unexpected has happened. Laika’s Medliblog has been chosen as a finalist in the category Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2008).

As a Dutch Medical Librarian, and a novice in the web 2.0 world, I’m thrilled and very honored that I’m among the finalists for this prestigious award.

Special thanks to Wowter (with a Dutch and an English blog) who took the initiative to nominate me.

Here is a complete list of the finalists for The 2008 Weblog Awards. The final list of nominees can be found here.

The voting starts tomorrow, well Tuesday 06-01-2008 (that is today here). Please keep tuned in….

p.s. How did I found out? Via twitter, of course, where one of the other finalists, “Scanman” or Vijay congratulated some of us.Thanks Vijay.

Laika’s MedLibLog in review: 2008

This blog saw the light in February 2008, so it is almost time to celebrate its anniversary.

Maintaining this blog has been an enjoyable and fruitful -albeit time-consuming- experience.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all readers of this blog for their visits, comments and support! I hope that you will continue to find content here that entices you to read and, even better, comment.

If you like the posts at this blog and you’re not doing this already you might consider:

• subscribing to my blog by RSS by clicking here (You have to install a reader as well) or
  
• subscribing by email by clicking here
• adding this blog to your Technorati favorites here
• following me on Twitter here

Or you can simply click on the figures in the sidebar:

I wish you all the best for 2009!

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Here is a short review of this first year of blogging.

Highlights were:

• A very positive review in a series “Blog Spotlight” authored by Danielle Worster (the Health Informaticist) in the “Library + Information Gazette“.
• Inclusion in the Top_50_health_2.0_blogs list of RNCentral.com (both discussed here)
  
• The invitation to present a slideshow on my blogging experience at the Spoetnik (Library 2.0) Symposium (see post here).
• Nominated for the Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2008) at Medgadget. (see the list)

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An overview of (a selection of) blog posts per subject:*

Searching, Biomedical databases.
PubMed: Past, Present And Future, PART II [1]
PubMed: Past, Present And Future, PART I [10]
Finding assigned MeSH terms and more: PubReminer [16]
BMI bijeenkomst april 2008 [19] [Dutch]
PubMed: Past, Present and Future PART III [39]
New Ovidsp Release Planned August 5th will allow more flexible searching [46]

Evidence Based Searching
The best moment teaching EBM-searching skills [31]
Time to weed the (EBM-)pyramids?! [35]
New Cochrane Handbook: altered search policies [-]
Podcasts: Cochrane Library and MedlinePlus [-]
New cochrane handbook: altered search policies [-]

Evidence Based Medicine, Methodology
Nursing Myths (1): Post-operative Temperative Measurements [2]
The Best Study Design… For Dummies [3]
Huge disappointment: Selenium and Vitamin E fail to Prevent Prostate Cancer.[7]
The (un)usefulness of regular breast exam [9]
FREE online course on evidence-based health care [14]
Thesis Mariska Leeflang: Systematic Reviews of Diagnostic Test Accuracy [18]
CC (2) Duodecim: Connecting patients (and doctors) to the best evidence [49]
Podcasts: Cochrane Library and Medlineplus [-]

Clinical practice, Consumer-related Subjects, Addison’s Disease
Changing care (for Addison patients) [11]
The importance of early intervention in an Addisonian Crisis[13]
23andMe: 23notMe, not yet [15]
Anatomy Lesson 2008: Living in Fear [20]
Etiquette-Based Medicine [22]
The OpenECGproject: an admirable Web 2.0 [42]

Science
The Real Sputnik Virus [4]
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams [6]
#Sciblog – a bird-eye’s view from the camera
Evolution and Medicine. Cancer and adaptive immune responses as evolutions ‘within’.

Web 2.0 tools
Incorrect Google Incoming Links? [5]
Delicious Google Toolbar [9]
Google Reader and other free (learning) tools [17]
Visualize your blog (words) with Wordle [21]
Locate Your Visitors (2) [23]
Forget Hyves. Go Twitter! [24]
Possibly an announcement about possibly related posts [25]
Locate-your-visitors [30]
Technorati Rank & Authority Dropping[38]
Blog Spam and Spam Blogs (1) [44]
WikiMindMap to Organize Wiki Content [50]

Other
For Palin & Obama, Fun & Photo’s [8]
A really delicious blog …[12]
Dutch Grand Round and other blog carnivals.: See the category Grand Round
For Spoetnik Course search for the Category Spoetnik (preliminary Dutch)
For Personal matter search for the category Personal

*([nr] indicates the popularity of the post according to WordPress stats, from 1 [most popular] to 50. Not all posts are shown.

Nomination Best Medical Blogs at MedGadget

It is time for the 2008 Medical Weblog Awards!

Since 5 years Medgadget, an independent on-line journal covering the latest medical gadgets and technologies, organizes a competition “to showcase the best blogs from the medical blogosphere, and to highlight the exciting and useful role medical blogs play in medicine and in society.”

The categories for this year’s awards are:

• Best Medical Weblog
• Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2008)
• Best Literary Medical Weblog
• Best Clinical Sciences Weblog
• Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog
• Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog
• Best Patient’s Weblog

Nominations will be accepted until Wednesday, December 31, 2008. You can put your nominations (1 in each category) in the comments section on the Medgadget site.
An update of the current nominees is given here. For further information see here.

Spoetnik Symposium

Yesterday the Spoetnik Symposium was held (see my previous announcement here).

SPOETNIK was a 17 week course on NEW (web 2.0) internet communication methods for librarians. The main target group consisted of UBA (University Library of Amsterdam) librarians. In total, there were more than 160 course members, each having his own blog.

The organizing UBA-spoetnik team, organized the Spoetnik symposium to learn from each other what has been done with the knowledge obtained a half after the course had finished.

The program was as follows:

14.00 Opening by Robin van Schijndel
14.10 Since SPOETNIK – part1: Blogging after SPOETNIK by Jacqueline (alias Laika)
14.25 Since SPOETNIK – part2: Colleagues about SPOETNIK by Alice Doek
14.40 Group discussions
15.30 Koffie- en theepauze
15.45 Feedback from the discussion groups
16.15 Since SPOETNIK – part 3: New applications by Pascal Braak
16.30 Closure and drink

The symposium started a few minutes later because Jacqueline was a bit late: she had to take off Laika’s astronaut suit (well kind of, she torn her new pantyhose and had to find a new one (that didn’t fit), she dubbelchecked whether she took her USB-stick with her and she forgot her glasses). It could have been worse, because it was just a few hours in advance that Jacqueline found out that the meeting was not in THE Doelenzaal at the Kloverniersburgwal but in the (also beautiful and old) Doelenzaal (zaal = room) in the UBA (main library of the University of Amsterdam). Of course, everyone else just knew this. That underlined the feeling that the Academical Medical Center and most other departments of the UBA are both physically and mentally apart, although still connected.

The atmosphere was very relaxed. Before the speeches, there was a lot of rumor or as Alice said: it is like a reunion. And that ’s how it felt! Finally I had the chance to meet my colleague bloggers in real life. I met Boekenvlindertje, Duijfje, Dyoke of Zygomorf (which I had always wrongly pronounced as Díe Joke, should be Dieuwke) and Turquoois, and I had long chat with Bert of “Een beetje adjunct” and finally with my blogmate George of Brughagedis, the one with whom I shared Google Docs, but never a drink, before. Both Bert and George have written a blogpost about this meeting (see here and here)

Although George doesn’t want to be in the picture, he was mentioned in the introductory speech of Robin as one person that ‘meant a lot for the course’. That is certainly true. You need some active contributors to inspire the rest. Besides George was the first to create an OPML-feed of all blogs (together with Pascal) which made it a lot easier to keep up with all Spoetnik blogs.

My talk was next. In 15 minutes I had to outline “Blogging after Spoetnik”. How did I continue when the course was finished? Here is my powerpoint presentation.

The theme I choose was “Blogging is navel gazing?!”. I notice that many people (including myself in the pre-web 2.0 phase) consider blogging as something egocentric, just an outlet for one’s feelings and frustrations, or hobbies and thoughts. What I hoped to show is that web 2.0 is not just a set of web 2.0 tools, but it is a whole philosophy. It is the philosophy of gaining momentum when sharing. But to do this you have to be patient, you must have a story to tell (content) and than you have to find readers, else you will remain ‘lonely’. I recommended twitter as a very good source to build up a community, if you use it the right way (find people to share things with). Although I have to say that it is a lot easier for me, as a health 2.0 blogger to find a large global community than someone specialized in Dutch linguistics.
Thus I feel committed to write an introduction on how to use Twitter effectively. Preferably in Dutch: at least 2 UBA colleagues spontaneously said they regret that I had changed to English.

Alice told us the origin of Spoetnik and gave an overview of the opinions of many other well known Dutch librarians about the course. The comment of Wowter was missing however, possibly because he expected Alice to use a web 2.0 way of finding it (Feeds and Twitter). (You can read his -Dutch- comment here). Many other libraries will follow the example of Spoetnik and 23 Dingen, although in a shorter version.

Pascal showed us that there were many new web 2.0 tools ( a few slides with last week’s additions), but according to Pascal none of them was really new, but all variations on a theme. He did whisper that he had a new twitter-firefox api for me, so I hope he will provide me with further details.

In between we discussed in groups what we had learned from the course, what we liked and didn’t like about different tools. Using Google Docs, we brainstormed about how we could implement web 2.0 tools in our library, UBA-wide. A very interesting part of the program, this exchange of thoughts. Robin gave a quick overview of the ideas, but shortly all input will be available at the Spoetnik-website together with the presentations.

The Spoetnik course has been a success, this meeting was a success and hopefully the implementation will also be a success. As Bert said: step by step. Rome wasn’t build in a day. Besides most UBA people are now involved in the implementation of a new program: Aleph. This has to be handled first.

Symposium “Since Spoetnik”

As can be read in the ‘About’ section, this blog was started as part of the online course SPOETNIK on NEW (web 2.0) internet communication methods for librarians. The main target group consisted of UBA (University Library of Amsterdam) librarians. In total, there were more than 160 course members, each having his own blog.

Now, a half year after the course finished, the organizing team, UBA-spoetnik, organizes a symposium to learn from each other what has been done with the knowledge obtained.

Does web 2.0 knowledge matter to your work and/or daily life? Do you use RSS to keep abreast of the latest developments in your area? Did you catalog all your books in Librarything? Did you continue blogging and is your blog becoming popular? How will new applications affect library service?

These are the questions that will be addressed November 26th in a nice old building in Amsterdam, de Doelenzaal.

Program

14.00 Opening by Robin van Schijndel
14.10 Since SPOETNIK – part1: Blogging after SPOETNIK by Jacqueline (alias Laika)
14.25 Since SPOETNIK – part2: Colleagues about SPOETNIK by Alice Doek
14.40 Group discussions
15.30 Koffie- en theepauze
15.45 Feedback from the discussion groups
16.15 Since SPOETNIK – part 3: New applications by Pascal Braak
16.30 Closure and drink

I’m very excited to meet my Спутник in real life. Although we organized a small meeting directly after the course, I couldn’t attend it. I hope that many Спутник will be there now.

For those Спутник reading this posts and coming to the symposium, are there any issues you would like me to address in my short presentation “Blogging after Spoetnik”?? You can mail me or give a comment here.

See you at the symposium.

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Symposium: “Sinds Spoetnik”

Dit blog werd gestart als ‘n onderdeel van de online cursus SPOETNIK over nieuwe web 2.0 communicatiemethoden voor bibliotheekmedewerkers. De cursus werd georganiseerd door de UBA (Universiteitsbibliotheek van Amsterdam) en richtte zich vooral, maar niet uitsluitend) op UBA-medewerkers.

In totaal, deed een onwaarschijnlijk groot aantal cursisten mee: er zijn wel meer dan 160 blogs aangemaakt. De voorloper van deze cursus, 23 dingen, was even succesvol, hetgeen aangeeft dat dergelijke cursussen toch in een behoefte voorzien. Een behoefte die ik zelf niet echt onderkend had. Ik deed gewoon maar mee om te kijken of ik er wat van opstak. Wat web 2.0 of bibliotheek 2.0 nou voorstelde, ik had er geen idee van. En blogs? Niet interessant, ik las ze nooit. Maar nu ben ik 180 graden om.

Ik vind het dan ook heel leuk dat de organisatoren een half jaar na het afsluiten van de Spoetnik-cursus het “Sinds Spoetnik” Symposium (prachtige alliteratie) organiseren (zie hier).
Het enthousiaste UBA-team bestaat, voor wie het nog niet weet, uit Alice Doek, Pascal Braak en Olga Marx (welke laatste mij via Bert Zeeman het boekje “Laika tussen de sterren” -met mijn avatar als voorpagina- heeft doen toekomen).
Vragen die tijdens dit symposium aan de orde komen zijn:

Wat is er sindsdien gebeurd met de opgedane kennis ? Welke rol speelt de ‘webstof’ op het werk of in je privé-leven? Gebruik je bijvoorbeeld RSS-feeds om op de hoogte te blijven, staat je complete boekencollectie mèt omslag op LibraryThing, maak je furore met je blog? Hoe zullen de nieuwe toepassingen onze dienstverlening beïnvloeden?

Programma

14.00 Opening door Robin van Schijndel
14.10 Sinds SPOETNIK – vol.1: Bloggen na SPOETNIK, door Jacqueline (alias Laika)
14.25 Sinds SPOETNIK – vol.2: Vakgenoten over SPOETNIK, door Alice Doek
14.40 Discussie in groepjes
15.30 Koffie- en theepauze
15.45 Verslag vanuit de discussiegroepen
16.15 Sinds SPOETNIK – vol.3: Nieuwe toepassingen, door Pascal Braak
16.30 Afsluiting & borrel

Ik kijk met spanning uit naar de RL ontmoeting met mijn Спутник. Hoewel ik mede een borrel had georganiseerd na de Spoetnikcursus, heb ik het zelf toen moeten laten afweten. Erg jammer. Ik had toch heel graag mijn vaste Спутник ontmoet. Hopelijk lukt het nu.

Voor die Спутник die dit bericht lezen en naar het symposium komen: zijn er nog zaken waarvan jullie willen dat het in mijn presentatie “Bloggen na Spoetnik” aan de orde komt? Of laten jullie je liever verrassen?

Zie jullie allen real life op het symposium!!

Technorati authority dropping due to anti-spam initiatives?!

In the previous post (Technorati rank & authority dropping like the stock market) I mentioned the acute overnight drop of my Technorati Authority from ~46 to 5 and the loss of many backlinks.

Here I suggested that this dropping in authority might be connected to the loss of Google backlinks.

From the Technorati discussion forum it is apparent that many other bloggers are having similar problems: the loss of blog reactions and thus “authority”.

Going through some of those discussion, I found that answers of the administrator gave a clue to the cause of the vanishing pings.

In the discussion string http://support.technorati.com/discussions/topic/4655 the administrator wrote on October 17, 22 and 28 respectively (see Figure):

[Note the different insight over time and the light hearted tone:

" Hello all, we did a bit of spam cleaning over the weekend..." ]

The last response links to a blogpost of Ian Kallen on October 27, entitled: Data cleanups and mishaps, that clearly confirms that the “mishaps” do relate to (finally) cleaning up Technorati spam in a very rigorous way.

Here is the integral text of the Technorati blogpost.

“Technorati has a number of initiatives in the works to improve the data in our search indexes and analytics systems. Web spam sites (splogs) have long been an issue that we’ve been working to address. The days when pings came only from legitimate blogs are long gone. Including all of the spam and duplicates, Technorati receives over 8 million pings per day. Over 90% are recognized and blocked as soon as they’re received. The remainder is allowed into the system and selectively processed – a large portion is determined to be spam later.

Recently, we’ve been focusing on link farms and pornography sites that have been getting into the system. Link farms are networks of sites linking to each other and other sites with the intention of raising search rankings. Sometimes, these sites link to legitimate blogs to “camouflage” these intentions or simply because the content has been stolen from another site. During a recent scrub of the system, a number of legitimate blogs were misidentified as spam. The flags set on those blogs were reversed, so going forward they are being indexed correctly again. However, some of the link and post data scrubbed from our search and analytics systems could not be reverted. We’re working on upgrades to make that data handling better managed but in the meantime, there are some gaps in certain blog’s data which may affect the authority of blogs they linked to. Additionally, some blogs suffered authority drops due to being the beneficiary of camouflaged links from spam sites being removed (wittingly or not); when those spam sites were removed, so was a portion of the authority of the legitimate blogs they linked to.

We have a number of technology initiatives in the works to improve the scaling characteristics and data quality of our systems. More news will be arriving on that in the weeks and months ahead.

Indeed this explains a lot. As I wrote in previous posts ( Blog Spam and Spam Blogs 1 (see here) and 2 (see here)) many splogs have linked to my blog and much of my content has been and is being stolen by such blogs!!

So I’m punished twice and hard for writing about health related issues (the desired niche for spamblogs selling cialis, viagra and those kind of drugs).

Once by blogs stealing my content and ending up high in ranking (see comment of Wowter and Keith Nockels here) and once by Technorati finally cleaning up those spamming blogs in a rigorous way, dragging me along in their slipstream!

Thanks Technorati! For shooting holes in my ranking, not responding to my mail and not adequately helping those who are hit by your rucksichtloss (excellent German term for what has been done, something like recklessly in English) weeding of the spam blogs that you’ve allowed to exist in Technorati for years! (see this critic in Wikipedia mentioned in my previous post).

Technorati, what are you going to do about it?

Technorati Rank & Authority Dropping Like the Stock Market

Technorati is a free internet search engine for searching blogs, which has indexed over 100 million blogs and 250 million pieces of tagged social media (Wikipedia). It is a potential important service for bloggers because it keeps track of how many different blogs link to your blog. So, it works similar to the citation score (i.e. H-index) for “real” authors (of peer reviewed scientific papers). The more you are linked by different bloggers, the more “important” your blog is considered.

Technorati introduced a new score, “Authority” for this purpose. The Technorati Authority is the number of blogs (irrespective of importance and including spam blogs) linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

The Technorati Authority is often part of other “objective” blog scoring systems as well. The algorithm for the Healthcare 100 even depends on 3 Technorati scores: Authority, Ranking and Inlinks.

In addition, Technorati can be used to follow the posts of favorite blogs and linking posts.

Regularly I found that Technorati was kind of unstable and lingering behind. Some blogs linking to me were not included, but as long as the deviation is not too large, it is not that worrisome.

However, approximately 10 days ago my rank suddenly fell OVERNIGHT from ~46 to 5!!
Concurrently many linking blog post had gone: there were more than 250, now there were 50.
The old and the new posts have stayed, but those in between vanished.

New post have linked to me afterwards and my authority has “grown to 10″, but I’m sure it should be near 50.

As a consequence I made a free fall in the Top Health care list: from 198 to 351, which is entirely attributable to the drop in Technorati Authority and Ranking (highlighted scores)

Perhaps faulty Google backlinks may have something to do with it. Just before the drop in my Technorati ranking many Google Links disappeared (Google Links are the “Incoming Links” in the WordPress dashboard). And, as off yesterday, there are regularly wrong Google backlinks: links from my favorite blogs, without “Laika” being mentioned in the actual posts. (Note: this appears a different issue, blogged in a separate post)

However, in the past, Google links were quickly restored, whereas wrong or lacking Technorati links were not.

I mailed to Technorati a week ago, but didn’t receive any response yet (except for the receipt of the message).

Am I the only one with this problem? Apparently not. In the Technorati Forum discussions (see here), a lot of items deal with this very subject. See for instance the Topics Rank & Authority Dropped Like the Stock Market (Superb title, thanks! ) and Reactions and authority disappearing

Some ‘tormented’ responders like msager doubt the real value of Technorati, see for instance Why hasn’t the press noticed that Technorati has been broken for almost a year?

Even Wikipedia mentions criticism of Technorati:

(…) In May 2006 Technorati teamed up with the PR agency Edelman. The deal earned a lot of criticism, both on principle and as a result of Edelman’s 2006 fake blog scandals. Edelman and Technorati officially ended the deal in December 2006. That month, Oliver Reichenstein pointed out that the so called “State of the Blogosphere” was more of a PR-tool and money maker for Edelman and Technorati than a reliable source, explaining in particular a) why Technorati/Edelman’s claim that “31% of the blogs are written in Japanese” was “bogus” and b) where the financial profit for the involved parties was in this.
In May 2007, Andrew Orlowski writing for the tech tabloid The Register (…) suggests that Technorati has decided to focus more on returning image thumbnails rather than blog results. He also claims that Technorati never quite worked correctly in the past and that the alleged refocus is “a tacit admission that it’s given up on its original mission”.

Another point of criticism is that there is no quality ranking. Each blog that links to you (no matter if it’s a spam blog and irrespective its (real) authority) increases your Technorati Authority with 1.

Finally there are regular outages: disappearance of favorites, links, slow indexing.

Combined with inadequate response to outages and questions raised by bloggers (its clients), Technorati Authority and Technorati Ranking don’t seem to be the reliable and valuable scores, they could have been.

But what is the alternative?

Grote Visite 1.5 (Dutch Grand Round)

Welcome to the October 21, 2008 edition of ‘grote visite’ or Dutch Grand Rounds.

This week there were 6 submissions to the blog carnival, only 2 of which were genuine (Dutch/health-related/not-commercial/no-spam).

Jan Martens of MedBlog.nl refers to an interesting article on Reuters about teleradiology and remote medicine. During the night shift medical images of patients in for instance the United States and Singapore are sent for appraisal to Indian radiologists because of lower costs and shortage of staff at night. Jan gives various examples of other interesting applications, but wonders whether this kind of telemedicine will be easily implemented in the Netherlands.

I know what lumpers and splitters are, but I’m not familiar with lurkers. As explained by Dr Shock MD PhD, with respect to online support groups, posters are the ones actively engaged by sending postings, and lurkers the ones that use online support groups in a passive way. Dr Shock summarizes recent research, revealing that participation in an online support group had the same overall profound effect on lurkers’ self-reported feelings of being empowered as it had on posters. Please read more details about the research at Dr. Shock’s excellent post “Lurkers in Health 2.0, Do They Benefit?”

By the way, Dr Shock has many other recent interesting posts as well and has an international reputation as medical blogger. For instance Pallimed hosting this week Grand Round refers to dr Shock as follows:

Dr. Shock consistently comes up with some very interesting journal articles. I really appreciated his take on impact of medical student biases towards patients with mental illness. So you may read that one as well!

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Below are my own choices from blogs form the Dutch medical blogosphere. I hope it will inspire other Dutch Medical Bloggers to participate more actively in the Dutch Grand Rounds.

The blog Health Management Rx of Jenn McCabe Gorman is already reviewed in another blog carnival, i.e.Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival Edition #33.

People from SugarStats talked with Jennifer McCabe Gorman, one of Health 2.0’s most ‘visible’ online evangelist as they called her. By the way Jennifer wants you to know that her blog, Health Management Rx, is not dead. The reason her posts have been slow is because she is intensively preparing for Health 2.0: User-Generated Healthcare conference, which will be held in San Francisco, California from October 22nd – 23rd 2008.host

Of course we already knew that Health Management Rx was not dead, because Jenn hosted the previous Dutch Grand Round.

Many other Dutch Bloggers are also heavily involved in health 2.0, and many of them are also on Twitter. For instance apart from Jenn: @mdbraber (also in San Fransisco at the moment), @martijnhulst of martijnhulst.nl, @Zorg20 of www.azo.nl (Acute Zorgregio Oost) and @fackeldeyfinds of fackeldeyfinds.com.

October 10th, most of these twitterers were attending the master thesis presentation of Maarten Den Braber (mdbraber) about the value of business models for hospitals, either live in Enschede or virtually (livestreaming!). Interested in this subject? You can find the links to the final document and the powerpoint he used for his presentation on this blogpost.

Below are some excerpts from other MEDNL-blogs, all in Dutch

A previous host of de Grote Visite, Marjolein Fermie of “De gezondheidszorg leuker en effectiever” gives a short overview of what makes working (in Healthcare) fun.
Another C3-log-ger, Frank Wolterink reflects about franchising health using the same franchise methods as fast-food chain McDonald’s (and others). Very aptly called: ‘Franchising Health Instead of French Fries’ in another (english) post on delivering health care.
Bettinepluut discusses the new “zorgplan” and wonders whether this will really improve the living environment of patients

At A day in the life of a shrink there is a very interesting post on “the” critical care physicians of today, who completely rely on scans and lab results without physical examining and sometimes without even having real contact with the patient. Apart from unnecessary long waiting for some diagnosis (i.e. prominent pancreas cancer metastases felt instantly), this can make the patient feel very lonely. People aren’t numbers!

This blog has numerous posts on music, as has Vrouwmenszorg.web-log, a very nice diary-like blog of a family physician. From Music (Pink Floyd, In a gadda da vida, Child in Time: my style!) and beautiful photo’s to ‘a day in the life of’: “No, don’t dial 911 for an ambulance, but take a taxi and see your doctor first”. Sometimes she writes for Paramedic WorldWide.

Wonder what Vrouwmenszorg or Paramedic Worldwide would think of my previous post on (acute) care (for Addison patients). Apparently paramedics are allowed to give infusions to diabetic patients with a hypo. Read the story “met gillende sirene door de stad” (here) about a young diabetic who hurries too much (and eats too little) on the first day of his new job.

Another colorful blog on acute care, music and personal matter is 100% Mike. One of his post begins with mentioning a very special legacy of his mother: ice creams she won in a contest. The same night an elderly woman came in for a paracetamol, but had to stay for pneumonia and lung embolisms.

Another blog about acute care, from an emergency nurse: ECGreetje. Easy to digest information on hobbies (shopping) and acute (heart) care. Here latest post is on the (recently published) positive effect of the song Stayin’ Alive of the Bee Gees on heart resuscitation, not only because of the text but more so because of the beat, which is exactly the rhythm one should use for a successful resuscitation attempt: ~103 beast per minute. ECGreetje, however, is afraid that she will start dancing when listening to this song.

The Quack (and the Scream) from http://forthebirdsblog.blogspot.com/

The provocative physicians Dr. Lutser and Creiptocheilus keep on ranting against (alternative) QUACK. Dr Lutser, who takes a blog pause for a while, is highly surprised that the advocate of the controversial anti-cancer “medicine” DCA (Dichloroacetic acid), Wim Huppes, does not use this or any other alternative medicine himself, now his cancer has returned.

Cryptocheilus mentions at his blog that he has been banned from the forum of the tv program TROS-RADAR, because he was considered too offensive against mister Braam, another ‘healer’. “C’est la ton qui fait la musique”, perhaps? Good reasoning convinces more than ranting. In his earlier post, Cryptocheilus shows some examples of selective use of evidence and ‘misinterpretation’ of a Cochrane Review by Braam. Pitty that Tros-Radar only hears the tone, without understanding the text.

Finally, clinical librarian and second life specialist Guus den Brekel of DigiCMB has some interesting post on SL, for instance about how to spend an $60,000 grant for a project entitled “AIDS Information and Outreach in the Virtual World of Second Life”. He also gives a nice overview of customizabe-widgets, i.e. for blogs, technology and education.

Liked the review of your post? Would have liked a review of your post? Like to read (some of the) posts? Then Huize Sonnendael, MedBlog, Patient en EPD, Man in de Zorg, Sister Nightfall, Zorglog, Ervaringen met een verpleeghuis, Cees Sterk, Zorg voor klanten, Manager zorg vertelt, Club Confabula, Over ZN, Zo! Communicatie, Ouderenzorg in de nieuwe werkelijkheid, De gezonde patient, Medisch Contact, Huntingtondaily.web-log.nl, MediGO, MaCoAd, Verpleeghuisarts.web-log.nl, Aria Rad, Herre Kingma, Metabool.web-log.nl, Werken in de zorg, Fontys Mediatheek, Ambupleeg, Weblog voor fysiotherapeuten, Verpleegkundige, Dokter Rob, Trimbos Online 2011, Pekke.nl, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Zorggemak.nl en Bas Leerink’s Blog as well as and some of the abovementioned bloggers become a lurker too, or perhaps a poster!

Contributing is very simple, just copy the link to the post that you would like to submit here (the blogcarnival).

Just want to read: the next carnival will be hosted November 4th at Dr Shock MD PhD.

Please contribute to the upcoming Dutch Grand Rounds, so we can advocate health blogs in the Netherlands and keep informed about each other work! Mag ook in het Nederlands, hoor! Graag zelfs!