Martin Bril: the Author, his Death and his Cancer

Martin Bril is dead.

No “news“, it happened a month ago: April 22.

Martin Bril was a well known Dutch writer, poet and columnist – and the man who invented “skirt day”.

He loved live -and love- in all it’s simplicity. He needed few words to describe the essence of things or as he would say: “The surface is deep enough”. But you know, it is looking at one drop of water and understanding the ocean. …

Other expressions: “Good is better than bad” and “You’ve people that bang the guitar really hard for hours, but I rather hear J.J. Cale. Always finished within 4 minutes, but the music stays with you.”

I liked his stories/columns most of the time, they often made me smile.

It is always sad when somebody dies young (Martin was 49), whether a “celebrity” or not. Especially when he leaves two young children and a wife.

I didn’t expect it and it really hit me. Why? I knew he had had cancer, but I thought it had gone. So did he a few years ago. I found a video-interview with him in 2007, where he said: “soon I will be declared “cured” – but then you will see it will return the other day.” In another interview I read: You never “beat cancer”, that’s Lance Armstrong-language. Cancer goes away or it stays. It often stays.

I always thought he had colon cancer, but it was esophageal cancer. That’s the trouble with Dutch:

• esophagus = slokdarm,
• jejunum, ileum = dunne darm
• colon = dikke darm.

Notice they all have “darm” in them. Mostly colon cancer is called “darmkanker” (or “dikke darmkanker”), and because esophagus is called slokdarm, slokdarmkanker is mistaken for darmkanker, which is quite another disease with other prospects.

Stupid, journalists keep on using the wrong name. Not that it matters a lot now, but still.

More “incorrect” was the fact that I first saw the announcement of his death in a newsletter from dokterdokter.nl (below). It is an online medical information site for patients. I have been getting their newsletter for years now, because -for one thing or another- I’m unsuccessful in unsubscribing to it. Dokterdokter.nl is typically a website that gives very general information, mostly leading to the advise “to check your doctor first”.

What struck me (besides the fact that I was taken by his death) was that his death was presented as Medical News, next to an enormous “oral sex” headline and the headline “what happens if you die?”. As if it was a tabloid. The message (he died the day before):

Martin Bril finally succumbed to esophageal cancer at the age of 49. Esophageal cancer has a bad prognosis. Why?
(if you click: )

“Martin Bril, the well known author …, died of esophageal cancer at the age of 49. He was a real hedonist. Cigarettes and alcohol were part of his life. Many years he had fought cancer, but Wednesday April 22 he lost his fight. Few people really completely recover from this illness.”

(….) Generally, the disease has to do with your lifestyle. In Western Countries, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption are the most important causes of esophageal cancer.

And then it continues summarizing the brochure of the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF- kankerbestrijding)

Whereas most medical sites (including the Dutch Cancer Society, from which all the information was taken) just neutrally say that the cause is unknown, but that alcohol and smoking are known risk factors for esophageal cancer, -and even more so in combination- dokterdokter puts a direct link between Martin’s lifestyle and his death, as if it was his own fault. Maybe it was, but at that moment I didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter. I found it disrespectful, tasteless. I’m quite interested in health and medicine and mechanisms, but the reason of his death -at this moment- was less important than his death itself.

As a matter of fact, Martin stopped using liquor and cocaine in 1997 after given an ultimatum by his wife (”you have two young kids!”) and after attending a trial of a drug baron (Johan V., de Hakkelaar) (to write about). He also wanted to quit smoking. I don’t know whether he succeeded, but he helped STIVORO (”for a smokeless future”) with their campaign (2002) by writing a beautiful column and making a video about (the difficulty of) quitting smoking. “I stopped smoking, because I didn’t like it anymore. Moreover, my kids didn’t want me to die because of smoking……..”

How much better was the reaction of STIVORO to the death of Martin, saying “we have lost a talented author” and thanking him for his input. Just a short notice and ending with the column Martin had written for them: “Did you ever tried to quit smoking?…I did”.

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Bij Nederlanders hoef ik Martin Bril nauwelijks te introduceren. Dat ik hier over hem schrijf heeft vooral te maken met het stukje dat ik in de nieuwsbrief van Dokterdokter.nl las. In feite was het dit bericht, waardoor ik wist dat hij gestorven was. Voor mij een schok. Ik lees de Volkskrant niet meer, dus het was mij ontgaan dat het slecht met hem ging. Het is ook een jonge vent, jonger dan ik, met twee dochters, net als ik. Zo kom het altijd nog een beetje dichterbij. En hij kon mooi schrijven. “De oppervlakte was diep genoeg,” zo zei hij, maar het was bij hem net of je in een druppel de hele oceaan kon zien.

Voor het eerst zag ik trouwens dat hij slokdarmkanker had. De meeste journalisten spraken van darmdanker, waar men in de regel toch dikkedarmkanker mee bedoelt. Slokdarmkanker is een heel andere ziekte, met een heel andere prognose. Vreemd dat het meerendeel van de journalisten het toch steeds over darmkanker heeft

Maar dit terzijde. Ik vond het vreemd, dat het bericht als een “nieuwsaankondiging” stond naast de kop “orale sex” en “hoe voelt het als je dood gaat”. Misschien had Martin er wel om kunnen lachen, maar ik vond het bizar. Het verhaal zelf vond ik ook nogal ongepast.

Wat stond er?

De ziekte slokdarmkanker werd schrijver Martin Bril op zijn 49e fataal. Het is een ziekte met slechte vooruitzichten, mede omdat het vaak laat wordt ontdekt.

“Schrijver Martin Bril, bekend van boeken als De kleine keizer en Arbeidsvitaminen en van zijn columns in de Volkskrant, is op 49-jarige leeftijd aan slokdarmkanker overleden. Hij was een echte levensgenieter, sigaretten en alcohol waren een vast onderdeel van zijn leven. Al vele jaren streed hij tegen kanker, maar woensdag 22 april was zijn strijd gestreden. Maar weinig mensen weten volledig te herstellen van deze ziekte.”De ziekte heeft meestal te maken met de leefstijl van mensen. Roken en overmatig alcoholgebruik zijn in Westerse landen de belangrijkste oorzaken voor het ontstaan van slokdarmkanker.

Andere bronnen -ook de KWF-brochure, waar dit stuk aan ontleend is, schrijven steevast dat de oorzaak niet bekend is, maar dat roken en alcohol (vooral in combinatie) de belangrijke risicofactoren zijn. Mogelijk is zijn leefwijze inderdaad de belangrijkste reden geweest dat hij slokdarmkanker heeft gekregen. Nou en? Is het nodig om dit zo op te schrijven? Een dag na zijn dood? Ik vond het nogal oneerbiedig. Misschien dacht men bij dokterdokter.nl dat het schrikeffect mensen zou weerhouden om veel te roken en te drinken, want “kijk, daar krijg je slokdarmkanker van!!” Behalve dat dokterdokter niet bepaald het juiste publiek (de “zelfkanters” en “hedonisten”) zal bereiken, zal zo’n actie sowieso weinig zoden aan de dijk zetten. Dan was Martin’s bijdrage aan de Stivoro campagne “stoppen met roken” (2002/2003) waarschijnlijk veel effectiever. Hij schreef een column voor ze en werkte mee aan een video.

Martin zei: “Ik stopte met roken omdat ik er geen zin meer in had. Bovendien; mijn kinderen vonden dat ik er niet dood aan moest gaan”. Eerder, na een ultimatum van zijn vrouw en het bijwonen van een zitting tegen de drugsbaron de Hakkelaar, was hij al gestopt met alcohol en coke.

Zo anders was ook de reactie van Stivoro. Niets vingertje wijzen: “zie je wel!”, maar dit:

“Samen met de rest van Nederland treurt STIVORO om het heengaan van een bijzonder mens en groot schrijver: Martin Bril

STIVORO heeft Martin leren kennen toen hij zich enthousiast inzette voor onze ‘Stoppen met roken’ campagne van 2002/2003. Hij was toen bereid zijn persoonlijkheid en zijn schrijftalent voor deze campagne in te zetten.

Wij zijn dankbaar dat we met hem hebben mogen samenwerken. We wensen zijn familie en andere dierbaren heel veel sterkte toe.

Hij schreef voor ons de volgende column:

“Bent u wel eens gestopt met roken?
Ik wel……..”

Photo Credit (CC):

• Martin Bril Close Up : http://www.flickr.com/photos/roel1943/309048020/
• Man reading a book of Martin Bril: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wijkerslooth/3492121752/
• Rokjesdag (Skirt Day):http://www.flickr.com/photos/pforret/73554771/

Twitter goes Viral: Swine Flu Outbreak – Twitter a Dangerous Hype?

Twitter has been praised for its actuality and news breaking character. Remember the earthquakes and the two recent airplane crashes (Hudson River, Schiphol). Twitter often was the first to bring the news.

Twitter’s power lies in its simplicity, -the 140 character limit-, its speed and it’s domino-effect. Tweets (twitter messages) can be read by your followers (I have appr. 650). If they find something important, funny or whatever they could “RT” or Retweet (i.e. resend) the message, and their friends could retweet it as well. Via these secondary networks Twitter can go viral (in its replication and spread).

Below a friends of a friend network of a well known twitter personality Robert Scobleizer, as obtained by Twitterfriends. Only the “relevant network” is shown, directed to someone in particular: tweets beginning with @ (followed by the twitter name of your friend). The actual reach of tweets not starting with @ is greater, because they can be read by all followers.

Apart from following specific tweople one can also search for certain words or (hash)tags via Twitter Search or #hashtags.

Pushed by celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey, who recently joined Twitter. Twitter’s traffic was poised to double and the number of tweeting people has steeply increased.

Twitter has been glorified by the stars. They created a real (meaningless) twitter mania.

But what raises high, can drop low.

Several sources dethroned Twitter because of it’s viral role in the recent swine flu outbreak. One of the first and most serious critiques came from a blog (Foreign Policy: Net Effect). It’s title: Twine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform.This is a serious allegation. Evgeny Morozov’s main critiques:

1. The “swine flu” meme has led to misinformation, fear and panic. Wrong info includes: fear that it “could be germ warfare” or “that one should not eat pork and certainly not from Mexico”.

2. Unlike a simple Google search Twitter gives too much noise (irrelevant or wrong information).

3. Messages from trustworthy sources have as much weight as those from uninformed people.

4. There is very little context you can fit into 140 characters, even less so if all you are doing is watching a stream.

5. Evgeny also worries about a future misuse of Twitter by cyber-terrorists shaping conversations on serious topics. A number of corporations are already monitoring and partially shaping twitter conversations about particular brands or products.

In addition some posts highlight that most of the Tweets belong to the category “witty or not so witty”. (also see this post)
And after these comments many similar comments were to follow: In fact these comments and critiques were going viral as well: take a look at this Google Search for Twitter Swine Flu and note the negative sound of most of the headlines.
The CNN website quotes Brennon Slattery, a writer for PC World,

“This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it’s just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information (..). The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media revolution.”

Is Twitter just a hype and useless as an information source? Is it dangerous when a wide number of people would turn to Twitter in search of information during an emergency? Or have people just found a stick to beat the dog?

I will go to several aspects of the twitter flu coverage as I have encountered it.

Number of tweets

Indeed, as brought forward by Mashable, Tweets about “Swine Flu” are *now* at 10,000 per hour!!

Yesterday, 5 out of 10 twitter buzzwords were connected to Swine Flu:

• # · Swine Flu
• # · swineflu
• # · Mexico
• # · H1N1
• # · Pandemic

Searching for information on Twitter
You can imagine that it is hardly useful to keep track of tweets mentioning *swine flu*, nor is searching for these buzzwords or hastags useful, if not combined with other terms or names, like CDC or laikas (just to find what you tweeted yourself).
I keep track of certain words via Tweetdeck in separate columns, accepting a certain “noise”, knowing this will only yield 20-50 tweets per day. It would not come to my mind to just blindly search for swineflu on Twitter.

The official media
It is said that Twitter doesn’t give useful or correct information, and indeed it hasn’t been designed for that (being merely a social Network). In its primitive form it is just online gossip or as The Register (UK) puts it- “it is not a media outlet“. But odd enough, the official media did not behave differently. Cable television programmers went into crisis mode and a look at newspaper front pages and website home pages around the world showed a range of responses, from the almost hysterical to the concerned and more measured (Reuter’s Blog).

Look at this message from AJ Cann, that I retweeted :

laikas: RT @AJCann Totally irresponsible #swineflu journalism in the Dail Mail http://tinyurl.com/cms3km (expand) >>and they say twitter evokes global panic! 9:56 AM Apr 27th from TweetDeck

MICHAEL HANLON: How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

via Daily Mail Online on 27/04/09

Is there really no reason to be worried?

Let’s face it. We don’t know an awful lot about this new virus strain. While it is true that the common flue has killed 13,000 people in the US since in a rather unnoticed way, and while there are relatively few swine flu casualties yet, one never knows how this new H1N1 epidemic will evolve. It might just fade away or it could kill millions of people. We just don’t know. It is a new, deadly virus. Not for nothing (as I learn from Twitter), the WHO has just raised the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5. But this is only meant to be prepared and to inform, not to cause panic.

Via @AJCann (on twitter), I was just alerted to a very refreshing view of Ben Goldacre on the whole situation. Ben, a doctor writing for the Guardian, excelling in critically informing the public about science (and quack) and a real valibrity, was invited all over by the media to be a naysayer on the “aporkalypse”.
Ben on his Blog Bad Science:

By Tuesday, pundit-seekers from the media were suddenly contacting me, a massive nobody, to say that swine flu is all nonsense and hype, like some kind of blind, automated naysaying device. “Will you come and talk about the media overhyping swine flu?” asked Case Notes on Radio 4. No. “We need someone to say it’s all been overhyped,” said BBC Wales.

I assumed they were adhering, robotically, to the “balance” template, but no: he kept at it, even when I protested and explained. “Yeah, but you know, it could be like Sars and bird flu, they didn’t materialise, they were hype.” Simon Jenkins suggested the same thing. It’s not true, I said. They were risks, risks that didn’t materialise, but they were still risks. That’s what a risk is. I’ve never been hit by a car, but it’s not idiotic to think about it. Simon Jenkins won’t be right if nobody dies, he’ll be lucky, like the rest of us. Do people think this flappily in casinos? The terrible truth is yes.

Ben compares it with the story of the boy who cried wolf and he concludes:

(….) because not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.

How to deal with Twitter Noise?

I do agree that it would be hardly useful to start monitoring all tweets about the flu.Twitter has produced millions of “tweets” about swine flu since this outbreak began a mere week ago and most of it has been nothing but noise.

Suppose you would listen to all radio channels at once: that would be an unbearable noise. Usually you choose a channel, your favorite one, and just listen what comes next. But you may switch to another channel anytime. And for news you might just go to a specific channel that you know is the most informative.

It is exactly the same with Twitter. I don’t follow everyone. Since I use Twitter mostly for my work (medicine, library, science, web 2.0) and not primarily for a chat or wit, I choose the tweople I follow carefully. If they produce too much noise I might unfollow them. They are my human filter to the news.

Furthermore among the ones I follow are News or Health Sources, like @CNN Health, sanjayguptaCNN, @BBC Health, @BreakingNews, @health and recently (because of retweets of friends): @WHOnews , @CDCemergency, Reuters_FluNews, Fluheadlines.

Below are some of my tweets starting off Saturday 24th April (see all here) (Black= tweets, green is a commentary). April 24 I was not aware that something really serious was happening, as I live in Europe and considered the swine flu as a local problem.

Once I saw @BreakingNews and @health mentioning real casualties and the WHO calling an emergency meeting, I realized the seriousness of the problem. I was also pointed to @WHOnews and @CDCemergency, the most trustworthy sources to follow.
I also understood that the swine flu might be difficult to contain.

laikas: RT @BreakingNews: BULLETIN — WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION CALLS EMERGENCY MEETING TO DISCUSS DEADLY SWINE FLU OUTBREAKS IN MEXICO AND THE U.S.2:31 PM Apr 24th from TweetDeck

laikas: RT @health WHO, CDC concerned about possible epidemic following reports of 60+ people killed by new flu strain in Mexico http://bit.ly/d3JsO 6:23 PM Apr 24th from TweetDeck

laikas: RT @TEDchris: Swine flu outbreak. This is how it was SUPPOSED to have been contained. http://is.gd/us6r Worrying. >> WHO protocol 6:56 AM Apr 25th from TweetDeck

This feeling was strengthened by the reporting of flu cases in other continents. Furthermore @allergynotes pointed to a map showing all cases reported thus far. At that time the map was very up to date and clear (not many dots). From the map I learned that a woman in Kansas was infected by her husband who became ill after returning from a conference in Mexico. Then I realized that the “swine flu” was no longer a swine flu but a “human flu”. My tweets about the New Zealand cases and the map were retweeted several times, thus contributing a little to the domino effect.

laikas: RT @BreakingNews: Reports of flu outbreak in New Zealand. 22 students may have been infected after a trip to Mexico. BNO trying to confirm. 3:25 AM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

laikas: RT @dreamingspires: RT @AllergyNotes Map of H1N1 Swine Flu of 2009 http://bit.ly/P2mcc (expand) 4:41 AM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

laikas: Map of H1N1 Swine Flu of 2009 http://bit.ly/P2mcc _ New Zealand added to the map. 4:42 AM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

View Larger Map
Direct Link to H1N1 Swine Flu Google Map:

Somewhat later came the informative phase. Long before the official media were giving any useful information, some of my twitterfriends alerted me to their own or other (official) news.

@ajcann already wrote a post on his blog Microbiology Bytes (a blog with the latest news on microbiology) :10 things you should know about swine flu. (April 25th)

laikas: Reading @sciencebase Swine Flu http://bit.ly/y5Xqz 7:47 AM Apr 26th from web

laikas: RT @sanjayguptaCNN: I’ll answer your swine flu Q’s LIVE on CNN at 7:30a ET. call 1-800-807-2620. thanks 4he gr8 tweet Q so far.

laikas: RT @consultdoc: Great swine flu summary via @ubiquity http://bit.ly/DK0xV (expand) Thanks Greg.1:18 PM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

laikas: RT @BreakingNews: The WHO is holding a news conference on swine flu. Michael van Poppel is covering it live @mpoppel. 1:49 PM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

laikas: RT @stejules: RT @mashable HOW TO: Track Swine Flu Online http://tinyurl.com/dh68n8 (expand) (via @tweetmeme) (5:17 PM Apr 26th from TweetDeck

Later the flu spreaded to Israel, Europe and South America.

At that point I became saturated with all information. I just follow the main news and read some good overviews

Conclusion

For me, Twitter was the first and most accurate news source to get informed and updated on the swine flu pandemics. It was reliable, because “my friends” filtered the news for me and because I follow some trustworthy sources and news sites. Indirectly other tweople also pointed me at good and actual information.

And in my turn I kept my followers informed. The news has alarmed me, but I’m not in panic or frightened. I just feel informed and at the moment I can do nothing more than “wait and see”.

It has often been said: Twitter is what you make of it.
But keep in mind the golden rule:

Information on Swine Flu

• WHO – WHOnews on Twitter ; website page dedicated to Swine flu with FAQs (also in PDF)
• CDC – @CDCemergency on Twitter : website with a special page for Swine flu
• RIVM – [Dutch] – Webpage about the “Mexican Flu”*
• Google – Mashup

News and Blogs

• Reuters News: Global coverage of swineflu.
• Ubiquity (2009/04/26) : swine flu facts and information
• Microbiology Bytes (2009/04/25/) 10 Things you should know about swine flu and Influenza also from AJ Cann:
• Science of the invisible (2009/04/) 10 More things you should know about A/H1N1* and 
• Science Base: Swine Flu FAQs (2009/04/27)
• An overview of good souces is also given by a fellow librarian Creaky at EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC: News, Public Health, Global Health: A potential pandemic of influenza (2009/04/27) In which she credits me and others “for posting scientific links and news about swine flu and steering me to several links for this post”. Thanks Creaky!
• In addition there are librarian guides about Swineflu Thanks @davidlrothman

Photo Credits:

• Red Twitter UK Networks: http://www.flickr.com/photos/porternovelli/3102296497/
• Influenza Virus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/1411171541/
  
• FUAF Twitter network): Metaroll (2008/12/26) Visualizing Twitter Networks
• David Armanoon Logic and Emotion (2008/12) The human feed how twitter networks filter signal from noise.

* wonderful those different names.

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.

Reference Management Software, Shut Down of 5 Google Apps and a Plane that Crashed.

Reference Management software, shut down of 5 Google apps and a plane that crashed. What have they in common? Nothing, except that these three unrelated subjects all reached me via Twitter last Thursday eve.

[1] When I checked my Tweetdeck (a twitter client) I saw a huge number of tweets (twitter messages) about the crash of a plain in the Hudson river. It now appears that Twitter and Flickr broke the news 15 minutes before the mainstream media. Below is the first crash picture which was posted on Twitter from an iPhone, taken by Janis Krums from a ferry. Earlier (Twitter as a modern tam tam) I gave some other examples of Twitter as a breaking news platform.

[2] Twitter is also a useful tool for up to date information and exchange of thoughts. For instance some tweeple (people on Twitter) had been asking about free reference management software. I had retweeted (RT, resend) the message and Thursday eve DrShock (of Dr Shock MD, PhD) tweeted a very useful link to Wikipedia which compared all reference management software, which was retweeted to the Twitter community.

The wikipedia article gives a comprehensive overview of the following software: 2collab, Aigaion, BibDesk, Biblioscape, BibSonomy, Bibus, Bookends, CiteULike, Connotea, EndNote, JabRef , Papers, ProCite, Pybliographer, refbase, RefDB, Referencer, Reference Manager, RefWorks, Scholar’s Aid, Sente, Wikindx, WizFolio, Zotero.

The following tables are included: the operating system support, export and Import file formats, citation styles, reference list file formats, word processor integration, database connectivity, password “protection” and network versions.

Very useful (although not always accurate). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software.

[3] @Symtym (of the blog Symtym) had just learned me how to use Google Notebook to clip and collect information as you surf the web, organize the notes in notebooks and publish the public notes automatically to twitter via twitterfeed. I found it real handy and gathered some material to write a post about it.

But then came the news, brought to me by @Dymphie (of Deetjes (Dutch)), that Google decided to close many services, including Notebook as well as Google Video, Catalog, Jaiku, Dodgeball) or as ReadWriteWeb says it: “Google Giveth, and Taketh Away”. (see announcement on the Google Operating System blog).

Although Google Notebook itself will remain, the active development will be stopped. Of course this was shocking for many faithful users, including me, Dr. Shock and many others (see comments here)

What are the alternatives? Soon @DrCris, author of several blogs including Applequack, tweeted on a solution soon to come: “Evernote is working on a Google notebook importer“. I heard great things about Evernote, many doctors seem to use it, so I might as well give it a try.

Diigo is also planning to make a GN importer (see here). Presumably other tools will follow soon.

Note added:

Two articles in Lifehacker give tips [1] “where to go when google notebook goes down” and [2] describe how you can import the entirety of your google notebook to ubernote (Thanks Dr.Shock.)

——————-

“Reference Management software, shut down of 5 Google apps and a plane that crashed”. Wat heeft dit met elkaar te maken? Niets eigenlijk, behalve dat ik donderdagavond hiervan via twitter op de hoogte gesteld werd.

[1] Eerder gaf ik al voorbeelden dat twitter als een moderne tam tam werkt en vaak een primeur heeft. Donderdag was dat ook het geval. De eerste berichten van het neerstorten van een vliegtuig in de Hudson rivier kwamen via twitter binnen.

[2] Twitter is ook nuttig om informatie te delen. Deze week vroegen mensen naar gratis reference manager software. Ik twitterde dat door (RT of retweet) en donderdag kwam @DrShock (van Dr Shock MD, PhD) met een erg nuttige link naar een artikel in wikipedia. Vervolgens werd door ‘retweeten’ een groot aantal volgers op de hoogte gesteld

In het artikel wordt de volgende software vergeleken: 2collab, Aigaion, BibDesk, Biblioscape, BibSonomy, Bibus, Bookends, CiteULike, Connotea, EndNote, JabRef , Papers, ProCite, Pybliographer, refbase, RefDB, Referencer, Reference Manager, RefWorks, Scholar’s Aid, Sente, Wikindx, WizFolio, Zotero met betrekking tot de volgende punten: “the operating system support, export and Import file formats, citation styles, reference list file formats, word processor integration, database connectivity, password “protection” and network versions”.

Heel erg nuttig en overzichtelijk (in tabelvorm met kleurtjes). Zie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software.

[3] Van @Symtym (blog: symtym) had ik juist geleerd hoe ik Google Notebook kon gebruiken om teksten al surfende op het net te knippen, bewaren en verzamelen in kladbloks en vervolgens te publiceren op twitter via twitterfeed (berichten automatisch ingekort tot 140 lettertekens). Ik vond het ontzettend handig. Het is een ideale manier om snel informatie te organiseren om later te bekijken, om er een stukje over te schrijven en/of om direct met anderen te delen.

Maar toen kwam als donderslag bij heldere hemel het nieuws via @Dymphie (van Deetjes) tot mij dat uit verschillende Google applicaties de stekker zou worden getrokken. Ook uit Google Notebook. En daarnaast Google Video, Catalog, Jaiku, Dodgeball).

Google Notebook zelf zal nog wel even blijven, maar de ontwikkeling zal worden stopgezet. Natuurlijk is dit nogal een schok voor trouwe gebruikers. Eerst worden mensen geenthousiasmeerd om een nieuwe tool te gebruiken en vervolgens wordt deze hen weer ontnomen

Gelukkig twitterde @DrCris, auteur van o.a. Applequack, vrijwel direct dat Evernote werkt aan een Google notebook importeerfunctie. Ik heb erge goede dingen gehoord van Evernote en veel artsen gebruiken het, dus ik ga dat ook maar eens proberen. Diigo is ook bezig met het ontwikkelen van een GN importeerfunctie (zie hier). Waarschijnlijk zal dit wel navolging krijgen. Toch blijft het vervelend om steeds maar van tool te moeten veranderen. Maar misschien moet je dat op de koop toenemen bij gratis applicaties.

Achteraf toegevoegd

Twee artikelen in ‘Lifehacker’ gaan over dit laatste punt [1] “where to go when google notebook goes down” en [2] describe how you can import the entirety of your google notebook to ubernote (Met dank aan Dr.Shock.)

23andMe: 23notMe, not yet

The company 23andMe was in the news thrice this month:

1. cutting the price of its service by more than a half
2. organizing a celebrity spit party
3. the husband of the 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, better known as Google co-Founder Sergey Brin, revealed he is at risk for Parkinson’s Disease, as determined by….23andMe.

Coincidence or part of a strategic plan?

23andMe is a ‘direct to consumer genetic testing’ company that as 23andMe puts it: “democratizes personal genetics”. The lowering of the service price from $999 to $399 brings personalized genomics within the range of many.

What do you get for those $399? A spit kit, you do your thing, send the tube to a certified lab, which analyzes your saliva for more than a half-million points (called SNPs) scattered across the 23 pairs of chromosomes you have (hence 23andMe), as well as your mitochondrial DNA. 23andMe shows the digital data and gives you information on certain traits and diseases. 23andMe also gives information on your ancestry and compares your DNA to your relative’s and friend’s-genes, if you want to share that knowledge with them. With your genes in their database you help 23andMe to perform more research for new discoveries, a program called 23andWe. In fact once you sign up you cannot refuse the use your (anonymous) DNA for this purpose.

The main question is: what purpose does this serve (besides as a potential for yielding income)?

According to 23andMe the main purpose is ‘for research’, ‘for education’ and ‘for fun’: “It’s fun to learn about your own genome”.

In this light, we should probably see the recent event 23andMe organized: a spit party where a few hundred people were lured away from the catwalks during the Fashion Week in New York City. On the sound track of “a whole lot of love” celebrities were spitting their DNA-containing saliva in a tube (see here and here). According Guy Kawasaki, who report on it on his blog (see here),

“even Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell were there providing their spit, but their handlers wouldn’t let me take a picture. I found this ironical: Giving DNA was okay but not a picture.”

The aim for which Sergey Brin let 23andMe test his DNA was less funny. As Sergey (whos mother has Parkinson) explains in his brand new blog:

(…..) Nonetheless it is clear that I have a markedly higher chance of developing Parkinson’s in my lifetime than the average person. In fact, it is somewhere between 20% to 80% depending on the study and how you measure. At the same time, research into LRRK2 looks intriguing (both for LRRK2 carriers and potentially for others).

Thus this shows a 3rd aim: diagnostic?!
Formally 23andMe denies there is a diagnostic purpose (in part, surely, because the company doesn’t want to antagonize the FDA, which strictly regulates diagnostic testing for disease). However, 23andme does give information on your risk profile for certain diseases, including Parkinson.

In addition, 23andMe encourages the formation of networks of people sharing the same traits.

“If you want to have a community around psoriasis,” Ms Wojcicki said, “we’d like to be able to allow you to form a psoriasis-specific community.” (see New York Times article)

Psoriasis-specific community when you only have the genes that may enhance the risk of getting psoriasis??

That sounds like condemning you to a psoriasis patient already?!

Then lets discuss the following burning question: how well does 23andMe predict that you will get the disease?

Even the LRRK2-gene data of Mr. Brin aren’t that conclusive. A marked higher chance of 20% to 80% is often misconceived as meaning that Sergey’s chance of getting Parkison is 20-80%, or “he will almost get the disease for sure”. As explained by the Gene Sherpa in his excellent post on this subject (see here) it only means that the LRRK2-mutation increases the normal chance of Americans/Europeans getting Parkinson from 2-5% to 4-10% at the most (the chance is less than doubled). Furthermore LRRK2 isn’t the most crucial gene for getting Parkinson.

23andMe has chosen to relate personal health info only to common diseases and common genes. Thus whether you have an enhanced or lowered risk for breast cancer (normal 1 out of 8 women) is determined by 2 (not very predictive) SNPs associated with Breast Cancer, but not by determining BRCA1/2 mutations that are highly predictive for breast cancer, but rare in the entire (western) population .

Although 24andMe explicitly mentions that the tests are for non-diagnostic purposes, it is hard to imagine that people will see it otherwise. But:

• Most genes are only weakly predisposing
• Often multiple genes are working in concert in a difficult to predict way (seldom one gene-one disease)
• The environment and chance also play an important role.

Thus the value of these fun predictions is low, but how does it affect people that think they are prone to having a disease? For some it might be reason to adjust their lifestyle (but then, what is the chance you really change “your destiny”), others may get fixed on their presumptive future disease, confused, or depressed. It is not without reason that genetic screening is usually restricted to people with high risks, when a disease can be predicted accurately (without too many false positives and negatives), something can be done about it (prevention or treatment), and only as part of a genetic consultation by professionals.

Sources; further reading

23andme : https://www.23andme.com/

Blogpost Sergei: http://too.blogspot.com/2008/09/lrrk2.html

Reaction to blogpost: NYtimes.com (2008/09/19): Technology (free login needed)

http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/2008/09/too-much-information.html

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-founder-sergey-brin-starts-blog.html

** http://thegenesherpa.blogspot.com/2008/09/lrrk2-and-parkinson-disease.html

Lower prices: several blogs, see blogcarnival at: Gene-Genie-37 (2008/09/14):

Party:NYtimes (2008/09/14) fashion,14spit (free login needed)

http://spittoon.23andme.com/2008/09/11/23andme-struts-its-stuff-in-nyc-during-fashion-week/

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/11/23andme-party.html

Nature science blogging conference

There is official forum for Science Blogging in London, today. The event is organized by Nature Networks.

You can find the program and the attendees here.

AJCann of Science of the Invisible has summarized in this post how you can virtually follow this conference.

At this moment (saturday 11.45 am) you can follow the forum live here

HATTIP: Twitter : @AJCann, @Jobadge

———————————-

Vandaag is er een conferentie voor ‘wetenschapsbloggers’ in Londen.

het wordt georganiseerd door Nature Networks

Hier kunt u het programma bekijken.

Op dit moment (zaterdag 11.45 uur) kunt u het programma hier live volgen.

AJCann van Science of the Invisible heeft hier samengevat hoe u deze conferentie kunt volgen.

HATTIP: Twitter : @AJCann, @Jobadge

The Real Sputnik Virus

I just rewrote the “about” section, saying that this blog was started as part of the web 2.0 SPOETNIK (EN: Sputnik) course, that I saw this blog as an experiment, but that I am now irreversibly infected by the blog/Sputnikvirus.

Coincidentally a real Sputnik virus has been discovered.¹ The virus is called Sputnik (Russian for “travelling companion”), because it “accompanies” the mamavirus, the big ‘mama’ among the recently discovered giant mimiviruses. Both the mamavirus and its satellite were present in an amoeba-species, found in a water cooling tower. Strikingly Sputnik cannot infect the amoeba on its own, but needs the companion of a mimivirus. In fact Sputnik hijackes the ‘viral factory’ of the mimivirus in order to replicate, making the mimivirus less infective. Therefore the Sputnik virus is said to actually “infect” another virus.²

Wait a minute…!! A virus that ‘lives’ from an other virus and takes over his replicating machinery? This means that the virus that is being ‘infected’ (the mamavirus) is a living organism??? But viruses are ‘dead’, at least that is what I learned.

Definition of a virus in one of my studybooks (Genes IV, Benjamin Lewin, 1990, p41).

“Viruses take the physical form of exceedingly small particles. They share with organisms the property that one generation gives rise to the next; they differ in lacking a cellular structure of their own, instead needing to infect a host cell. Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells are subject to viral infections; viruses that infect bacteria are usually called bacteriophages”

Thus ‘per definition’ viruses are not alive ànd they do not infect other viruses?!

But what is in a definition/name?
According to Aristotle a definition of an object must include its essential attributes or its “essential nature”. However humans may only observe part of the essential attributes, especially when it concerns the infinitely small or infinitely large (which limitates the accuracy of our observations). Nature made his own definitions/categorizations and we just trying to find the rules, if any, to bring some order into chaos. But in science rules and concepts can be falsified and this rule may be one of them.

That viruses may be at the boundaries of life is no new discussion. According to wikipedia:

Biologists debate whether or not viruses are living organisms. Some consider them non-living as they do not meet all the criteria used in the common definitions of life. For example, unlike most organisms, viruses do not have cells. However, viruses have genes and evolve by natural selection. Others have described them as organisms at the edge of life.

As you can see from the scheme above (from wikipedia) the classification of living organisms has never been rigid and as time goes more ‘kingdoms’ have been discovered.

The Mimivirus seems to be at “the edge of life”, because it

• is as large as some bacteria
  
• has a genome larger than a number of bacteria
• encodes some genetic products previously not known to be possessed by any virus (and lacking from some bacteria) enabling it to code for metabolic pathways itself.
  
• but lacks genes for ribosomal proteins, making mimivirus dependent on a host cell for protein synthesis and energy metabolism
  (source: microbiologybytes.com/virology/Mimivirus.html)
• can be infected by a virus (or “virophage” in parallel with “bacteriophage”).

Besides the what-is-a-living-organism-issue the discovery of the Mimi-Sputnik virus couple raises some other interesting points.

• The paradigm that viruses are evolutionary latecomers, evolving as parasites after the archaea, bacteria and eukaria had formed is challenged by comparative genome-analysis which suggests that the virus world is the most ancient.
• There is an abundance of Mimi-like genetic sequences in the (virus-rich) ocean leading to a suspicion that giant viruses are a common parasite of plankton.
• Sputnik-like DNA is also found in the ocean, raising the possibility that satellite viruses could play a role in regulating the growth and death of (Mimi-infected) plankton. Therefore these marine viruses could be mayor player in the global ecosystem
• Although Mimiviruses primarily infect amoeba, antibodies have been found to the virus in some human pneumonia cases. If these mimiviruses have their own satellites…. then this might perhaps be therapeutically exploited against large DNA viruses in human.

Finally I would like to close this post with an apt poem of Jonathan Swift (often cited in this context):

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.

And another coincidence: There is a popgroup sigue-sigue-sputnik that has an number called virus (on the album ray-of-light.)

NOTES
¹The Sputnikvirus has been detected by the team led by Jean-Michel Claverie and Didier Raoult (CNRS UPR laboratories in Marseilles), the same team that identified the mimivirus as a virus.
²Some of the finding are not completely new, e.g. Sputnik was not the first virus-satellite: Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus had been discovered before. Some researches don’t regard a satelite virus as a virus, however, but as subviral

SOURCES
La Scola, B et al The virophage as a unique parasite of the giant mimivirus, Nature DOI:10.1038/nature07218; announced in ‘Virophage’ suggests viruses are alive – Nature News, 2008 august 6th
Other news-coverages:
NRC-handelsblad, 2008-08-09 en wetenschapsbijlage 2008-08-10
telegraph.co.uk 2008-08-06
sciencenow daily news 2008-08-06

BACKGROUND INFO and HYPOTHESES
about the sputnikvirus:
findingdulcinea.com: good starting point for further information about Sputnik and mimiviruses with links to other sources
scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/
the-scientist.com/blog/
about the mimivirus :
a general overview in http://www.microbiologybytes.com (last update 2007)
and “unintelligent-design at discovermagazine.com/2006

about the origin of viruses and their presence in the sea: again….
Nice overview ‘Viruses in the sea’ in Nature by Curtis A. Suttle et al(2005)
Hypothesis: The ancient Virus World and evolution of cells by Eugene V Koonin in Biomedcentral (2006) (pdf-open access)
General: Wikipedia, ie about Viruses and Bacteriophages

—————

Ik heb net de “about” pagina herschreven: ik schrijf dat ik dit blog ben gestart in het kader van de web 2.0 SPOETNIK cursus, dat ik dit blog als een experiment zag, maar dat ik inmiddels voor altijd geinfecteerd ben met het blog/Spoetnikvirus.

Toevallig las ik afgelopen zaterdag in het NRC dat er een echt Spoetnik virus is ontdekt.¹ Van de Spoetnikcursus weet ik nog dat Spoetnik in het Russisch metgezel betekent. Het virus kreeg deze naam omdat het zich samen met het mamavirus, het grootste virus onder de reusachtige minivirussen, in een amoebe ophoudt. Opmerkelijk genoeg is het Spoetnik virus helemaal niet in zijn eentje in staat om de amoebe te infecteren, maar heeft jij daarbij de hulp van het mimivirus nodig, in die zin dat Spoetnik de virusfabriekjes van het mimivirus inpikt om zichzelf te vermenigvuldigen. Met andere woorden, het Sputnik virus is in staat een ander virus te infecteren.

Wacht even?!……… Een virus dat een ander virus infecteert en ‘ziek maakt’? Dat betekent dat het virus dat geinfecteerd wordt ‘leeft’. Maar virussen zijn dood, dat heb ik tenminste zo geleerd.

Definitie van een virus in een oud studieboek (Genes IV, Benjamin Lewin, 1990, p41).

“Viruses take the physical form of exceedingly small particles. They share with organisms the property that one generation gives rise to the next; they differ in lacking a cellular structure of their own, instead needing to infect a host cell. Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells are subject to viral infections; viruses that infect bacteria are usually called bacteriophages”

Dus viruses leven per definitie niet en kunnen andere virussen niet infecteren?!

Maar “what is in a definition/name”?
Volgens Aristoteles moet een een definitie van een voorwerp/begrip essentiële elementen of de ware aard omvatten. Maar mensen zien misschien maar een deel van deze kenmerken, vooral als het om oneinig grote of oneindig kleine dingen gaat. De natuur maakt zijn eigen indelingen en wij proberen om wetten te achterhalen, voor zover deze er zijn, om orde in de chaos aan te brengen.
Volgens de regels der wetenschap zijn wetten en concepten echter toetsbaar en falsifieerbaar. Dat virussen levenloos zijn zou dus ook ontkracht kunnen worden.

Het al dan niet ‘levend zijn’ van virussen is geen nieuwe discussie. Sommige biologen zien virussen als niet-levend, omdat ze niet àlle belangrijke kenmerken van leven hebben, ze hebben bijvoorbeeld geen cellen. Virussen hebben echter wel genen en evolueren door natuurlijke selectie waardoor ze volgens anderen wel op het randje van het leven balanceren.

Het Mimivirus lijkt nog het meest op het randje te balanceren. Het

• is groter dan de kleinste bacterien
  
• Heeft een groter genoom dan menige bacterie
  
• codeert voor genproducten die niet in andere virussen voorkomen, het heeft bijv. genen die voor stofwisselingsroutes coderen.
  
• mist genen voor ribosomale eiwitten, waardoor het evenals andere virussen van de gastheer afhankelijk is voor de synthese van eiwitten.
  (bron: microbiologybytes.com/virology/Mimivirus.html)
• kan, zoals we hier hebben gezien, geinfecteerd worden door een virus (of “virofaag” in analogie met “bacteriofaag”).

Behalve bovenstaande implicaties voor wat we ‘leven’ noemen, maakt het Mimi-Spoetnik-koppel nog meer discussie los.

• Op basis van vergelijkend genoomonderzoek lijkt het onwaarschijnlijk dat virusen evolutionaire nakomertjes zijn, maar meer dat ze aan de voet van de archaea, de bacteriën en de eukaryoten hebben gestaan.
• Er is heel veel Mimi-achtige genmateriaal in de oceanen gevonden, hetgeen zou kunnen betekenen dat reuzevirussen wel eens een algemene parasiet van plankton zouden kunnen zijn.
• Spoetnik-achtig DNA wordt óók in de oceaan gevonden. Misschien dat satelliet-virussen wel een slutelrol spelen in de regulatie van de hoeveelheid plankton.
• Hoewel Mimivirusen vooral amoeben infecteren, zijn antistoffen tegen dit virus ook bij enkele patienten met longontsteking gevonden. Als deze mimivirusen hun eigen satellieten hebben, kunnen deze wellicht ingezet worden tegen de ziekteveroorzakende virussen.

Tenslotte een zeer toepasselijk gedicht van Jonathan Swift (veelvuldig in deze kwestie aangehaald):

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.

Nog een toevalligheid Er is een band sigue-sigue-sputnik met een (vrij heftig) nummer virus (album ray-of-light).

NOTES
¹het Spoetnik- en het mimivirus zijn ontdekt door Jean-Michel Claverie en Didier Raoult (CNRS UPR laboratories in Marseilles) en zijn team.
²Niet alle bevindingen zijn echt even nieuw. Vòòr Spoetnik waren er al andere virussatellieten ontdekt, zoals de satelliet(virus)van tabaksmozaïekvirus. Door velen wordt zo’n virus niet als ect virus gezien, maar als subviraal beschouwd.

Twitter Traumas: Twitter’s Janus Face

In a few posts I praised Twitter, the free microblogging service, for its value as a rich source of social contacts, news and ideas. See for instance this post about Twitter as a modern tamtam or this one titled: “Forget Hyves go Twitter”.

In the short period I used it (2 months) I also noticed some drawbacks: its frequent down times, for instance. The sudden disappearance of half of my followers, a phenomenon, which appeared to affect half of the Twitter community last week. The vanishing of part of the archive (@Deeboeks). However, last week the situation has come to a head by the banning of some if its most active users. Why? Because these highly following and followed twitterati were apparently suspected as spammers. Without thorough verification, that is. These addicted Twitter-users were greatly inconvenienced.

@davedelaney: “(from his blog) Take my email analogy and consider how you would feel, or as if someone took your personal journal and address book and refused to return them.”

@pfanderson: (from her blog) “Now, two important points. First point, earlier this week I stated in this blog that Twitter is my #2 productivity tool. In other words, this is REALLY important for me! Second point, Twitter funkiness (like Second Life funkiness) is not unusual, so at first I did not realize this was anything beyond the typical. (…..) All kinds of alarms went off. I had just been asked to demo Twitter (among other social techs) at an important upcoming meeting. Wait a week? For them to just look at the problem? Ummm, that could be a REAL problem!”

Well, it isn’t bad when spam is banned. Indeed many of the spamming or advertising twitterati are following a huge number of people, but are followed by relatively few. Thus a ratio of 1500:50 sets the alarm bells ringing. But then you must do a second check: of profiles, website links and tweets, of course. A proper check of @davedelaney, @tibbon, @conniecrosby, @skalik, @marjarpanic, @abrudtkuhl, @pfanderson (one of my favorites) @narain (a twitterer I referred to as bringing breaking news about Bomb blasts in Bangalore!!) would have learned that these people intensively use twitter for serious purposes. Quite different from other twitterers that follow a whole crowd, only producing twitter messages like: “want to do X than look at this (= my) website” or all kind of quack. And these twitter-spammers are not banned…

But everybody can make mistakes, as long as you….. right, 3rd problem….. communicate it directly to your customers, preferably before you ban them. And if you faile to do so, … right 4th mistake…. do you best to fix the problem and …..o.k. 5th really unforgivable mistake …. always give yours sincere apologies!!

Nothing of the kind happened and that is really bad. If I could, I would ban @Ev (Twitter’s silent leader who was enjoying wine and pie while some of his most loyal users were panicking, according to @davedelaney’s description) at least for a while. Without checking, without notification, without responding to his frequent requests for help, and foremost without any apology afterwards!!

As far as I know all accounts are back now, but it has cost these people a lot of precious time and has changed their feelings about twitter as a program.

@davedelaney has a poll at the end of one of his post asking:

“Are you having second thoughts about Twitter now?”

66% of the responders gives an affirmative answer.

There are some Twitter alternatives, but as Delaney says:

“Of course my main love for Twitter is the Community (…). Without the people there would be no Twitter. I don’t love Twitter, I love the people on Twitter who make it such a vibrant place to be. I don’t love Twitter, I don’t even like Twitter at the moment – I may even hate them.”

Further reading:

On Dave Delaney’s blog (August 3rd) : 5-reasons-why-i-hate-twitter. Very balanced: he also gives 5-6 reasons why he loves Twitter; some alternatives mentioned as well)

An account of the banning adventure :can also be found at the blogpost of @pf anderson: twitter_banning.html and on here slideshow on Flickr

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

Eerder promootte ik Twitter als een microblogging-dienst, omdat het zo’n rijke bron is van sociale contacten, nieuws en ideeen. Zie bijvoorbeeld de berichten: Twitter as a modern tamtam en “Forget Hyves go Twitter”.

Maar in de korte periode dat ik het gebruik, ondervond ik ook enkele nadelen. Twitter is bijvoorbeeld herhaaldelijk niet bereikbaar (”down” , “upgrading” of te zeer belast). Vorige week verdween ongeveer de helft van mijn fans (en ik heb er al zoveel), maar “gelukkig” bleek ik niet de enige te zijn. Soms verdwijnt een deel van het archief, bij @Deeboeks bijvoorbeeld: “Al mijn tweets van voor 6 april 2008 zijn uit ‘t archief verdwenen”. Maar vorige week was toch wel de klap op de vuurpijl. Opeens waren de accounts van de meest actieve twitteraars verdwenen. Waarom? Ze werden kennelijk van spammen verdacht en zonder staving verwijderd. Dat bracht behoorlijk wat ongemak met zich mee, daar dit juist mensen zijn die Twitter veel gebruiken en er deels ook afhankelijk van zijn. Voor @pfanderson: is Twitter is haar “#2 productivity tool“. @davedelaney: “zegt het als volgt:

“consider how you would feel, or as if someone took your personal journal and address book and refused to return them.”

Natuurlijk is het bannen van spam niet slecht. Als de verhouding following/followers 1500:50 dan moet er wel een belletje gaan rinkelen. Maar dan moet je vervolgens het e.e.a. checken: profiel, evt. website en natuurlijk de aard van de tweets.
@davedelaney, @tibbon, @conniecrosby, @skalik, @marjarpanic, @abrudtkuhl, @pfanderson (een van mijn favorieten) @narain (die het nieuws over de aanslagen in Bangalore bracht!!) zijn intensieve en serieuze gebruikers. Dat kun je in één opslag zien.

Iedereen kan fouten maken, maar je moet natuurlijk wel goed en tijdig communiceren met je gebruikers, alles doen om de fout te herstellen en vooral achteraf je excuses aanbieden. En dat is allemaal niet gebeurd.

Wat zou ik graag Twitterbaas @Ev (die alleen twitterde dat hij heerlijk genoot van wijn en quiche terwijl zijn klanten in paniek waren en om zijn hulp vroegen) het zelfde lot doen ondergaan: account rucksichtlos verwijderen, niet op de hoogte brengen, niet reageren en niet helpen. En natuurlijk al helemaal geen excuses aanbieden!!

Ik geloof wel dat alle accounts nu weer in orde zijn, maar het heeft deze mensen wel veel ergernis bezorgd en hun gedachten over Twitter veranderd.

@davedelaney heeft zelfs een poll gezet onder zijn Twitterbericht met de vraag:

“Are you having second thoughts about Twitter now?”

66% van de mensen die hierop gereageerd hebben zegt ja.

New OvidSP version 2.0 postponed

The new OvidSP version 2.0 scheduled to be launched August 5th and announced on my blog yesterday (see here) is postponed a few days.

According to OvidSP:

“Some last minute adjustments are being carried out at present to ensure the absolute excellence of the platform. Unfortunately this means that the release date has been postponed with no new date available yet.”

As a result, my training schedule on August 8th will be cancelled (so that’s how I found out). It is advised to register for any training session on “what’s new in OvidSP” (click here) once the release date is announced.

Thus we have to wait a few days for the much-desired new OvidSP version.
That’s regretful, because my coming days are fully planned with OVID searches and I’m really looking forward to this new flexible platform…. But changes are on their way… And I’m looking forward to them

——–

In mijn vorige bericht kondigde ik aan dat de nieuwe OvidSP versie 2.0 gisteren in de lucht zou zijn, maar deze deadline is kennelijk niet gehaald. Er moet toch nog het e.e.a. aan versie 2.0 gesleuteld worden, voordat deze perfect werkt.

Ook de trainingssessies zijn tot nader order uitgesteld. Aangeraden wordt om je pas op te geven als OvidSP werkelijk draait.

Ik vind het jammer, want ik keek er echt naar uit. Juist nu, want de komende dagen zijn gevuld met lange OVID searches (voor systematische reviews en een richtlijn). Maar, ja, wat in het vat zit verzuurt niet…

New OvidSP release (planned August 5th) will allow more flexible searching

I wrote before (see here) that ‘OVID-SP gave me RSI’, because I had to scroll too much between last search and new command. A huge TIP-box is in the way and the last search and command bar are too far apart.

Friday, I finally decided to write to OVID’s customer service, asking them if they could do something about the TIP-box and the way the search box and search history are placed relative to each other.

The same day I got an answer from a very kind Technical Support Engineer writing:

“I am really sorry but we can not remove the Tip box. However the interface is going to change next week, the search history box will be more customizable.”

YES!
Never mind the TIP-box (for the moment).
I’m very happy that OVID does take his users seriously. This means a real step ahead for heavy OVID-users. Thanks!

He also gave me the official communication about the new release, shown below (or follow this link)

By the way the new OvidSP version 2.0 is scheduled to be launched TODAY instead of July 31st.

Want to become acquainted with the new features and functionality in the latest version of OvidSP than follow this link to register for a (webex) course (choice from 20 dates!)

Transforming the Way You Search with More Flexibility and Customization of OvidSP Workflow Tools

Dear Ovid Customer:

The next release of OvidSP on July 31st is all about flexibility and enabling users to search the way they want to search. In our third weekly email introducing what you and your users will see on July 31st, learn more about new user-configurable customization enhancements to OvidSP’s workflow tools that further deepen the search experience and help users get to the results they need quickly.

• Search Aid – Now users can expand or collapse this search refinement feature based on their preferences for managing the results screen.

• Search History – Many users perform complex searches, some involving as many as 60-80 lines of search. Now, the Search History can be placed above or below the main search box, so there’s no need to spend time scrolling up the page to review search strategies. Plus, you can sort all your searches in either ascending or descending order so that the last search statement is always viewable.

• Results Manager – To accommodate for a wide variety of user behavior and to minimize scrolling when it comes to managing results, the Results Manager is now located in two places, above and below the results set. You can minimize it in both places to save valuable screen real estate.

Plus, now you can customize the “common” limits—those available on the main search page. These settings will act as defaults for users who are able to login via a personal account.

Like all of the upcoming enhancements and new features, those illustrated above are based on extensive feedback from and interviews with customers and users.

Coming soon to the OvidSP Resource Center will be screenshots, an updated training schedule, Frequently Asked Questions, and more. Be sure to contact your Ovid Account Representative or support@ovid.com with any questions.

Regards,

Wolters Kluwer Health – Ovid

---

©2008 Ovid Technologies

Eerder schreef ik dat OVID mij RSI bezorgde, omdat ik teveel moest scrollen bij langdurige searches. Er staat een enorme “OVIDSP TIP” hinderlijk in de weg en de zoekregel staat te ver van de laatste search.

Vrijdag besloot ik eindelijk om OVID’s klantenservice te mailen. Of ze niet de tip weg konden halen en iets aan de plaatsing van zoekgeschiedenis en de zoekregel konden doen (ik verwees daarbij naar mijn blog).

Diezelfde dag nog kreeg ik antwoord van een zeer attente mijnheer van de helpdesk (die getuige latere correspondentie ook inhoudelijk het een en ander weet). Hij schreef:

“I am really sorry but we can not remove the Tip box. However the interface is going to change next week, the search history box will be more customizable.”

YES!
Laat de OVIDsp-TIP maar even zitten (voor nu).
Erg goed dat OVID zijn gebruikers serieus neemt. Ze doen tenminste wat met de feedback! De aanpassingen zijn echt een stap vooruit. Bedankt, OVID!

De officiele aankondiging van OVID staat hierboven. U kunt ook deze link volgen.

Belangrijkste punten:

• Je kunt naar wens de zoekgeschiedenis boven of onder de zoekbalk plaatsen en de searches in opklimmende of dalende volgorde plaatsen. Deze flexibiliteit lost mijn probleem dus al grotendeels op!
• Je kunt de “Search Aid” in- of uitklappen.
• De “Results Manager” staat nu zowel boven als onder de zoekresultaten en kunnen ook weer ingeklapt worden. Hierdoor hoef je ook weer minder te scrollen als je iets met de resultaten wilt doen.

Tussen 2 haakjes: De nieuwe OvidSP version 2.0 staat VANDAAG op de planning, niet 31 juli

Wil je vertrouwd raken met de laatste versie van OvidSP dan kun je je opgeven voor 1 van de 20 (!) online (webex) trainingen via deze link.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

**********************************************************************
For people just looking for video’s, powerpoints or transcripts of Randy’s presentation(s), the most important links are these:

http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ Randy Pausch’s Web Site on Carnegie Mellon University, i.e. with links to transcripts and powerpoint-presentation (low resolution, used in this post) of his lectures.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy/ ” The Legacy of Randy Pausch” Dr. Gabriel Robins, colleague Professor, mentor and friend. With additional interesting links
http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/ about Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
http://www.alice.org/ link to Alice
the video’s are shown below,

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

The other day I wrote about Twitter as an alternative and sometimes breaking news source.

That same day this news reached me via twitterer @Mndoci (Deepak Singh):

Randy Pausch. I didn’t know who that was, so I googled him.

There is a full record in Wikipedia, which is VERY up to date: Randolph Frederick Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh..and a bestselling author who achieved worldwide fame for his The Last Lecture” speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon.

His “Last Lecture” was viewed online by over six million people and has been recently been published as a book (see Librarything description).

When he held the speech, he knew he had just a few months to live: the pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with a year before had spread to other organs. He decided not to play it very emotional, but to go for dark humor.

This is how he starts his Last Lecture (which ironically had recently been renamed as ‘Journeys’). It sets the tone for the rest of the presentation:

“What Indira didn’t tell you is that this lecture series used to be called the Last Lecture. If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it. [laughter] So, you know, in case there’s anybody who wandered in and doesn’t know the back story, my dad always taught me that when there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them. If you look at my CAT scans, there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me 3-6 months of good health left. That was a month ago, so you can do the math. … We can’t change it, and we just have to decide how we’re going to respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you. [laughter] And I assure you I am not in denial. It’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on….”

He ends the lecture entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” like this:

So today’s talk was about my childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and some lessons learned. But did you figure out the head fake? [dramatic pause] It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. Have you figured out the second head fake? The talk’s not for you, it’s for my kids. Thank you all,good night

I found his speech very inspiring. A mixture of amusing stories and wise life lessons. Not just theories but real examples illustrating his points. Very clear and recognizable. His main theme: Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. He showed how most of his dreams were realized (or dealt with or ‘adapted’: ‘Being Captain Kirk’ was changed in ‘Meeting Captain Kirk’), the magic word being perseverance: “never give up!”. Other one-liners: “Loyalty is a two way street”. “Give people enough time and they will always impress you”.

He learned a lot from other people. This is what he learned from his football coach when he was 9 years old:

“And he showed up for practice the first day, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’t brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the other kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right, and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right, so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really good story because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.”

He also stresses that it’s not what you say but how you say it (”c’est le ton qui fait la musique”). Here he tells a story about how his dutch uncle and first boss Andy ‘beats him up’.

“He Dutch-uncled me. And he put his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word “you’re being a jerk.” [laughter] Right? He doesn’t say you’re a jerk…”

The same uncle stimulated him to do his PhD instead of taking a job:

“It wasn’t the kind of thing people from my family did. We got, say, what do you call them? …. jobs. And Andy said, no, don’t go do that. Go get a Ph.D. Become a professor. And I said, why? And he said, because you’re such a good salesman that any company that gets you is going to use you as a salesman. And you might as well be selling something worthwhile like education.[long pause, looks directly at Andy van Dam] Thanks.”

He did do his PhD and became a charming professor, a brilliant researcher ànd a gifted teacher. His specialty was virtual reality. He was able to mix theorie and practice in a very fruitful way. For instance he combined his work as a professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon with Sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA) (one of his childhood dreams) and he became co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). He also was the director of the Alice (www.alice.org), a software project ‘learning’ children to program while they just think they’re making movies and video games. The good stuff is coming in the next version, where we will teach them Java language while they think they are writing moviescripts using Sims characters, Randy said.

“I, like Moses, get to see the promised land, but I won’t getto set foot in it. And that’s OK, because I can see it. And the vision is clear. Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard. That’s pretty cool. I can deal with that as a legacy.”

And what a legacy this is. Randy’s wife, Jai, put out a statement the day he died thanking “the millions of people who have offered their love, prayers and support. Randy was so happy and proud that the lecture and book inspired parents to revisit their priorities, particularly their relationships with their children,” she said. “The outpouring of cards and e-mails really sustained him.” (Foxnews, July 28th)

Please enjoy the videos and/or go to links below where you can find more information.

more about “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving …“, posted with vodpod

Apart from his last lecture I also include his lecture on time management. This was something Randy also was an expert in. I’m sure it will be very inspiring as well.

more about ““Time Management” by Randy Pausch, No…“, posted with vodpod

Miscelanous Sources (other than referred to above)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
interview with oprah – 2007 (slideshow- oprahshow)
Time special: Randy Pausch on the fifth annual list of the world’s most influential people
Foxnews, July 28th

————————————————————–

Eerder schreef ik dat Twitter soms een heel goede en snelle nieuwsbron kan zijn.

Diezelfde dag las ik de volgende twitter van @Mndoci:

Randy Pausch. Ik had eerlijk gezegd geen idee wie het was, dus heb even gegoogled.

Er is een volledige pagina in Wikipedia, over Pausch, die nogal erg up to date was: Randolph Frederick Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh..and a bestselling author who achieved worldwide fame for his The Last Lecture” speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon.

Zijn “Laatste Lezing” werd zeker door meer dan 6 miljoen mensen bekeken en is recent als boek uitgebracht (zie Librarything).

Toen hij de toespraak hield had hij net te horen gekregen dat hij nog maar enkele maanden te leven had. De pancreaskanker (het jaar daarvoor bij hem vastgesteld) was uitgezaaid en niet meer behandelbaar. Hij had er heel emotioneel over kunnen doen, maar het lag meer in zijn aard om het met wat galgenhumor te brengen.

Ironisch genoeg was de naam ‘Last Lecture’ net gewijzigd in ‘Journeys’. De lezing heette de last lecture omdat je aan de studenten levenswijsheden zou onderwijzen alsof het de laatste mogelijkheid was: wat geef je mensen mee als je weet dat je nog maar kort te leven hebt? Maar nu was het letterlijk zo. Randy grapte meteen: nu ben ik eindelijk zover dat ik de lezing mag geven, veranderen ze de naam.

Zijn lezing heet “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. Hij vertelt hoe hij zijn kinderdromen heeft gerealiseerd of omgevormd (Captain Kirk zijn werd Captain Kirk ontmoeten, dat is gelukt). Sommige dromen die hij niet gerealiseerd heeft (premier league football player), hebben toch hun nut gehad omdat hij belangrijke zaken leerde, die hem later in zijn leven goed van pas zouden komen. Hij leerde bijvoorbeeld van zijn rugby-trainers hoe belangrijk het was te volharden: eerst de basis leggen, dan de vruchten plukken.

Zijn lezing gaat niet alleen erom hoe je je eigen dromen kunt verwezenlijken (of eigenlijk hoe je moet leven), maar ook hoe je die van anderen kunt verwezenlijken. Dat was zijn sterke punt.

Hij was van plan gewoon een baantje te nemen, zoals iedereen in zijn familie, maar op aanraden van een nederlandse oom ging hij studeren (computerwetenschappen), promoveerde hij en werd hij professor en nog belangrijker: een charmante persoonlijkheid, een briljante onderzoeker en een begenadigd leraar. Hij was gespecialiseerd in “virtual reality” en zag een van zijn kinderdromen (disney-imagineer) in vervulling gaan toen hij op vernuftige wijze zijn professoraat in Carnegie Mellon wist te combineren met (meerdere) Sabbaticals bij Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA). Later zette hij zelf het Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) op. Ook was hij directeur van Alice (www.alice.org), een software project dat kinderen ‘leert’ te programmeren, terwijl ze denken dat ze films en video’s maken. In de komende versie wordt kinderen geleerd met Java te werken terwijl ze denken dat ze scripts voor een film met Sims-figuren schrijven.

Het is een mooie nalatenschap, die Randy ons achterliet

“I, like Moses, get to see the promised land, but I won’t getto set foot in it. And that’s OK, because I can see it. And the vision is clear. Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard. That’s pretty cool. I can deal with that as a legacy.”

Voor details van zijn lezing verwijs ik verder graag naar de video’s, engelse citaten en verdere literatuurverwijzingen hierboven.

Twitter as a modern tam-tam

I´ve just discovered Twitter, a free social networking/microblogging service. As described in a previous post I prefer Twitter to Hyves: it’s globally oriented, more interactive and there are more collegues out there.

Via Twitter you can share ideas and thoughts with people with the same kind of interest (followers/-ing). People tell what they’re doing, give links to interesting information. Sometimes Twitter serves like an Q&A. It is only difficult to condense the message to 140 characters -and still be understood. Here is an example:

laikas Does anyone know the code(s) in PubMed for : ‘has been indexed’ and ‘has not been indexed’. There are so many papers unindexed >1 yr old. about 19 hours ago from web

eagledawg @laikas Not all citations will have MeSH [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE], details on why (scope,author manuscripts) at http://snurl.com/34lyf

laikas @eagledawg Thnx. PubMedCentral® manuscripts may be the main culprit in this set.
about 2 hours ago from web in reply to eagledawg

eagledawg @laikas yep that will do it too! Hard to explain anything about NLM resources in only 140 characters about 2 hours ago from twhirl in reply to laikas

Apart from being a social platform, Twitter can also function as a news breaking platform. In case of the China earthquakes, for instance, Twitter brought faster coverage than traditional media. (i.e. see this blog about technology from BBC News)

A Dutch example: the news that Joran van der Sloot (possibly involved in Natalee Holloway’s disappearance) threw a glass of red wine in the face of private detective Peter R. de Vries after a TV broadcast first appeared on Twitter. Corrie Gerritsma saw it all happen in the studio, twittered it, which was picked up by Fransisco van Jole, a journalist, specialized in Internet coverage (see his post here). While the official media were asleep, Francisco made it public on Twitter. Later a video showing the incident appeared on You Tube. I learned these facts from yet another twit: dutchcowboys. Thus Twitter is really working as a tam-tam here. Dutchcowboys notes that although the group twitterati is small they’re moving closer and closer to the fire.

Quite coincidentally I picked up two very different news stories simultaneously through Twitter yesterday morning while at work.

One was about the Bomb blasts in Bangalore, brought to us via Twitter by @mukund and @narain (via @pfanderson). They covered in detail what happened, before the official news releases.

Mukund twittered:

6 minutes ago: Bomb Blasts in Bangalore – 4 locations, details to follow #Bloreblast
4 minutes ago: Blasts at: Sirjapur Road, Nayandhalli, Madiwala , Adugodi, Rajaram and Mohan Rai Circle
1 minute ago: Bangalore blasts – telecom connectivity is broken so trying to call bangalore wont work

And finally blogged about it (see post here). The usefulness of Twitter to follow the events was stressed by Daniel Bennett at his post: using Twitter to follow the bangalore bomb blasts (click here). Daniel is a PhD student researching the impact of blogging and new media on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism.

Although the news is not verified and authorized, it is fast, and that may be important, especially for local news (also to reassure people: ‘no death’). Other examples and thoughts about Twitter’s relevance as a news source see the comments to the post on ‘BBC news technology’ I referred to before.

The other event I was alerted to at the very same moment was local news from the ‘University of Leicester (UoL) Library (UK), where the falling down of a part of the heavy wooden ceiling in the new library caused a little disaster (luckily without any casualties), resulting in a temporary closing. Interestingly, Leicester Twitter-users were well aware of the event before it was common knowledge, and colleagues were informing each other via Twitter. The question then asked, both at the blog of the Leicester Library and on 2 video’s by @AJCann (one below): how should we respond to such unofficial events (possibly much worse events at a crowded campus)? And which role social media have to play in such a context?

more about “Vodpod Firefox Extension for WordPress”, posted with vodpod
http://api.seesmic.com/#/video/iae6d6VuZW/watch

In a second video (made that same day) AJCann stressed that:

“everything with a service function should have a service dashboard especially in case of services outages, like Twitter.com and wordpress.com have.
Where is your university organization service dashboard? How does your organization inform about the status of your institution, library, blog, lecture, module, whatever?”
(freely cited)

On his video he referred to the url http://tinyurl.com/6h42hs: the announcement on “Movius Interactive Corporation Announces Rapid Alert Application” on O’Reilly Radar.

Certainly, also a service like PubMed should be in dashboard to notify their customers of outages. As Michelle Kraft recently ranted at her blog (see her post here):

Apparently PubMed’s servers went down at 1:00am that morning… As usual the emails started coming in from Medlib-l regarding PubMed. Librarians from different areas of the United States asking about the health status of PubMed as they too noticed it doing funky things. There was a brief discussion and some questions raised on Twitter Medlibs about what to do if PubMed goes down and you don’t have access to Ovid. What do you do, where do you send patrons? Would third party tools work?

Thus again the unofficial tam-tam did its job, but wouldn’t it be far better if PubMed itself “put an obvious note on the site when there is an outage or if there are problems”?

Indeed Web 2.0 communication is an undeveloped area. There are plenty possibilities, not only for individuals, but also for libraries, hospitals, universities and organizations.
But how to convince the majority of people that think those tools/sites are just trendy?!

Note added ‘in proof’: while I was working on this post, @mukund was twittering about new blasts in Ahmedabad.

———————–

Ik ken de gratis netwerk/microblogging dienst Twitter eigenlijk nog maar kort, maar ben er nu al enthousiast over. Zoals ik eerder schreef verkies ik Twitter boven zo’n site als Hyves, dat meer een profielensite is, minder interactief èn Nederlandstalig. Met Twitter bereik je veel meer mensen, ook (en in mijn geval vooral) veel collega’s.

Via Twitter kun je ideeen en gedachten met geestverwanten (followers/-ing) delen. Mensen vertellen wat ze aan het doen zijn, of geven links naar interessante informatie. Soms is Twitter net een vraagbaak (Q&A). Alleen is het soms een hele kunst om je boodschap helder over te brengen in 140 tekens, zoals wel blijkt uit de volgende, overigens zeer nuttige, conversatie:

laikas Does anyone know the code(s) in PubMed for : ‘has been indexed’ and ‘has not been indexed’. There are so many papers unindexed >1 yr old. about 19 hours ago from web

eagledawg @laikas Not all citations will have MeSH [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE], details on why (scope,author manuscripts) at http://snurl.com/34lyf

laikas @eagledawg Thnx. PubMedCentral® manuscripts may be the main culprit in this set.
about 2 hours ago from web in reply to eagledawg

eagledawg @laikas yep that will do it too! Hard to explain anything about NLM resources in only 140 characters about 2 hours ago from twhirl in reply to laikas

Twitter is echter niet alleen een sociaal medium, maar zorgde meerdere malen voor een primeur, zoals bijvoorbeeld over de aardbevingen in China. Twitter bracht het nieuws sneller dan de traditionele media (zie bijvoorbeeld dit blog over technologie van BBC News)

Om dichter bij huis te blijven: het ‘nieuws’ dat Joran van der Sloot (die mogelijk betrokken is bij de verdwijning van Natalee Holloway) na een tv-uitzending een glas rode wijn in het gezicht van Peter R. de Vries had gegooid, werd het eerst bekendgemaakt via Twitter. Corrie Gerritsma zag het incident, plaatste een bericht op Twitter, dat opgepakt werd door de journalist Fransisco van Jole (zie bericht). Terwijl de Telegraaf ’sliep’, bracht Francisco deze primeur naar buiten via Twitter en later via zijn blog. Daarna verscheen er ook nog een You-tube video van het hele gebeuren. Op mijn beurt las ik dit alles weer op een twit van de dutchcowboys. Dus Twitter werkt soms echt als een tam-tam. Dutchcowboys merkt ook op:

“Twitter lijkt ondanks de nog relatief kleine groep van gebruikers steeds dichter op de actualiteit te kruipen“.

Heel toevallig kwamen gisteren via Twitter 2 heel verschillende nieuwsberichten voorbij.

Een ging over bomaanslagen in Bangalore, via de Twitterati @mukund and @narain wereldkundig gemaakt (getipt door @pfanderson). Vòòrdat de officiele kanalen het raporteerden.

Minuut na minuut twitterde Mukund:

Bomb Blasts in Bangalore – 4 locations, details to follow #Bloreblast
Blasts at: Sirjapur Road, Nayandhalli, Madiwala , Adugodi, Rajaram and Mohan Rai Circle
Bangalore blasts – telecom connectivity is broken so trying to call bangalore wont work

Vervolgens vond hij ook nog tijd om erover te bloggen (zie hier). Het belang van Twitter in dit opzicht werd uit de doeken gedaan door Daniel Bennett: using Twitter to follow the bangalore bomb blasts (zie hier). Als promovendus onderzoekt Daniel de effecten van web 2.0 media op de oorlogsverslaggeving door de BBC.

Hoewel niet officieel en niet geverifieerd, is het nieuws er wel heel snel. Met name bij locaal nieuws kan dat van belang zijn, niet alleen om mensen te waarschuwen, maar ook om ze gerust te stellen (‘geen doden‘). Zie voor enkele andere voorbeelden van het belang van Twitter als nieuwsbron, de commentaren op het BBC news technologie-blogbericht.

Vrijwel tegelijkertijd speelde zich een klein drama in de ‘University of Leicester (UoL)’ Bibliotheek af: een deel van het zware plafond van het net nieuwe gebouw was naar beneden gevallen. Gelukkig was dit vòòr openingstijd gebeurd en waren er geen slachtoffers, maar de bibliotheek werd wel tot nader order gesloten. Werknemers met een twitter-account hoorden het nieuws het eerst. Continu stelden ze elkaar op de hoogte via Twitter, ook toen er rond het middaguur weer groen licht gegeven werd.
De twitteraar @AJCann stelde zich toen de vraag hoe we op dergelijke onofficiele berichten horen te reageren en welke rol de sociale media in deze context moeten spelen. Zie de discussie op het blog van de U0L Bibliotheek. Ook maakte hij diezelfde dag nog 2 video’s, waaronder bovenstaande video.

In een 2e video benadrukte AJCann:

“everything with a service function should have a service dashboard like Twitter.com and wordpress.com have, especially in case of services outages,
Where is your university organization service dashboard? How does your organization inform about the status of your institution, library, blog, lecture, module, whatever?”
(vrij ‘vertaald’)’

Op de video is steeds de url http://tinyurl.com/6h42hs: in beeld een verwijzing naar een bericht op O’Reilly Radar over de noodzaak van een snel waarschuwingssysteem.

Zo’n waarschuwingsysteem zou ook een dienst als PubMed niet misstaan om de gebruikers te waarschuwen als ze weer eens ‘down’ zijn, of hun servers overbelast. Ik moest hieraan denken, omdat Michelle Kraft het kortgeleden hierover had (zie hier voor haar blogbericht):

Apparently PubMed’s servers went down at 1:00am that morning… As usual the emails started coming in from Medlib-l regarding PubMed. Librarians from different areas of the United States asking about the health status of PubMed as they too noticed it doing funky things. There was a brief discussion and some questions raised on Twitter Medlibs about what to do if PubMed goes down and you don’t have access to Ovid. What do you do, where do you send patrons? Would third party tools work?

Dus wederom is het zo dat de onofficiele tamtam zijn werk deed (voor diegenen die het volgden), maar het zou toch veel beter zijn als PubMed problemen zelf officieel aankondigde.

Web 2.0 communication is een nog onontgonnen gebied. Het biedt heel veel mogelijkheden, niet alleen voor individuen, maar ook voor bibliotheken, universiteiten, ziekenhuizen, organisaties.
Maar dan is het wel nodig dat de grote meerderheid die denkt dat het allemaal maar niets is of veel te trendy over de streep getrokken wordt… net als ik, een paar maanden geleden.

PubMed Online Search Clinic on ATM!

Just a short note at the last moment.

Back from vacation I picked up some twitter and blog messages announcing a PubMed search clinic offered at July 17 (today!) at 2pm Eastern time (8pm Amsterdam/Paris time, see timetable throughout the world).

A 30 minute online search clinic will be presented by the NLM® and the National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC) via Adobe® Connect^TM on Thursday, July 17th (2pm ET). The presentation will cover changes to PubMed including changes to how PubMed handles your search (the new automatic term mapping process), the citation sensor, and the beta Advanced Search page.

There is a maximum capacity of 300 participants, on a first come first served base. However, the clinic will be recorded and will be available for viewing later.

To follow the clinic log in at: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/pmupdate08/

or: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html.
Here you find more info about the clinic, as well as tips for successful participation in the clinic. Be sure to test it beforehand.

Sources:

The Krafty Librarian: @Krafty (twitter) and several posts on her blog.

Nikki (Eagledawgs) guest post on David Rothman’s blog

Background info on what others have blogged about recent Pubmed can be found on another Krafty Librarian’s post and several of my previous post, including PubMed: Past, Present And Future, PART II

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Even op de valreep.

Net terug van vakantie zag ik enkele twitters en blogberichten die een “PubMed search clinic” aankondigden.

Deze begint om 8 hr p.m. (welke tijd waar?).

Het duurt 30 minuten en gaat over de recente veranderingen in Pubmed, de nieuwe ATM (automatic term mapping), de citation sensor en Advanced Search Beta.

Er kunnen 300 mensen deelnemen, volgens het “wie het eerst komt, het eerst maalt” principe. De clinic wordt wel opgenomen, zodat je hem later nog eens kunt bekijken.

Inloggen voor 19.00: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/pmupdate08/

Meer info op: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html.
Inclusief tips om de clinic goed te kunnen volgen.

Bronnen:

The Krafty Librarian: @Krafty (twitter) en verschillende blogberichten.

Nikki (Eagledawgs) te gast op het blog van David Rothman.

Achtergrondinfo over wat anderen van de veranderingen vinden zijn ook te vinden de site van Krafty Librarian (zie hier). Enkele van mijn eerdere berichten zoals PubMed: Past, Present And Future, PART II zijn er ook aan gewijd.

MEDBLOG NL 5!!

Just a little note before I leave for vacation.
Maybe you’ve seen these blue and red widgets at the sidebar.

They are here for a month now. It means that I’m number 5 on the MedblogNL-list in May 2008. Rather surprising because this is the first time I’m on the list.
However, I must admit the list is not very long (30).
(….and no 126 on the English list. This list is quite a bit longer and has WSJ.com: Health Blog at top(!)

And since I don’t expect to stay up in the list for long, I just want to put it here… to remember. Yeah, I’m also a bit proud as a newbie in the blogosphere.

My Technorati rate also went up to 30, but now it’s on his way down, mostly because the Spoetnik-collegues dont’link to each other anymore. Most have stopped active blogging.
I miss it. When my vacation is over I will visit some of the Spoetnik pages. See how you’re doing. I promise.

Back to the Medbloglog. You can see the Dutch MedblogNL here. The may-top 5 is below. Most of the other bloggers are physicians, nurses and students.

The MedBlog log is an idea of Jan Martens. He thought it would be nice to have a list of Dutch Medical Blogs. Later he also made a list of English blogs.
Scores are based on a number of parameters, like Google PageRank, Technorati ranking, Feedburner hits, 4) number of posts and 5) number of reactions.

The blogpost of all the NL blogs can be seen at http://www.medbloglog.nl/.

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Sorry, heb nog 2 uur voor we met vakantie gaan (max. 2 uur slaap), dus even geen vertaling van deze post. En nog wel nu het om een NL-top25 gaat.