1. Van der Waals Plot. The right volume and the right pressure (point D), result in the least repulsion. Sound familiar in your personal relationships?
2. Van Deemter Plot for Chromatography. Flow too little, flow too much, you missed your peak resolving power (point B/U).
3. The Long Tail of Keywords.
The sweet spot exists everywhere. Where the right amount of work or volume meets the right amount of pressure – everything seems to work.
Let’s find this in our day today. I’m back from a VERY long hiatus from blogging.
I never knew she had this kind of talent. I was just chatting with a coworker this afternoon about blogs and she mentioned she did photography. I never knew it would be this inspiring.
Elena has no idea that I’m plugging her work. Who cares, there are like three people who will probably see this post. Hopefully that’s three more people who get to see her work. See you at work Monday Elena.
After reading ex-Googler Bret Taylor’s blog asking for a Wikipedia for Data, I came across this link on Read.Write.Web in response to Bret’s call. If you’re a data junkie and are frustrated by how hard it is to find open datasets on the web, then check it out.
I may not be showering or moving off my seat this weekend. My pale complexion perpetually worsens.
A major German publisher is trying to do just that.
It seems a debate is brewing in the “Wikipedia-sphere” surrounding the commercialization and the soon-to-be-made profit from the voluntarily written and edited online encyclopedia web site. For the first time, a major publisher has made plans to print out and sell popular articles from the site, leaving many wondering if the content’s writers are being scammed out of royalties to which they are due.
People are debating whether authors of Wikipedia articles will get screwed out of royalties derived from sales of the publishings. I don’t think that should even be an issue. Publishing Wikipedia articles would give writers even more incentive to crank out better quality pages. Think about it.
Right now, Wikipedia provides authors who are intelligible on any given topic, a medium to teach the world. They [wikipedia] provide the service for free and in return, you provide quality information. For free. Nowhere in the business model is monetization discussed.
Now a publisher looks at making a profit off of a movement that began to “make information free.” Some think that this move may give writer’s less incentive to write.
I think that Wikipedia is all about accolade and recognition. Put your name out there and become the expert. People write on Wikipedia because it provides them a platform for recognition. Publish their work and now they can profit off of the information they post. This will give authors of good information great.
However, there will be a great correlary to this as well – as is anything that involves monetizing something that was never meant to be. When you bring money to Wikipedia, you bring idiots who start writing about anything to just make some money. All of a sudden, the self-policing of Wikipedia will become much harder as there are more and more articles which will need to get flagged and updated for accuracy of information.
It will be very interesting to see what happens with this proposal moving forward as Wikipedia continues to expand and increases in relevancy.
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at the Health Populi blog recently published a report entitled “The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media.”The report addresses issues around the new social networking sites that focus on health issues, but also begins to take a look at “what’s next for social networks and health?
Think about the wealth of information being generated nowadays and how much emphasis the Web 2.0 model has placed on user input. Look at what Wikipedia has done for information or what Amazon has done for product reviews. The study states that nearly 59% of patients look on the internet first for health-related information before they see a doctor.
This isn’t surprising seeing that the internet is relatively anonymous in the sense of getting information on very personal issues. Think about how many HIV or STD patients don’t go see a doctor just out of sheer emberassment. I mean there are social taboos.
I like to think of my friend who has Crohns Disease and the number of doctors he has seen, many of them specialists but living in different parts of the U.S., if not the world – some as far away as Turkey.
How beneficial would it be to have a support group wiki specifically created for Crohn’s with all of the top doctors in the world contributing updated information, maintaining open dialog with patients across the world?
I think that open dialog between patients and doctors online in a research manner could be very beneficial. Patients could end up looking at articles posted by a doctor on the wiki and may end up proposing their own solutions. At least that is what my friend with Crohn’s hopes for. In some respects, he knows the symptoms of Crohn’s better than his doctors.
My friend spends hours a day looking for published articles on Google Scholar, only to find that most of the research is closed off to subscribers. Why?
I think about how much information a doctor can possibly give a patient if the average patient time in clinics nowadays is just under six minutes? Is that really enough time to discuss the intricacies of the patients dilemma?
I don’t think so. I do think that there is hope though. I’m just waiting for that Crohn’s specialist to put up a damn social network so they could actually communicate with their patients for more than six minutes.
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Side Link: Larry Page talks on advancing science through having scientists place an emphasis on marketing themselves.
I just came across this new RSS Reader while reading the Apple Blog. This is pretty great use of information design – leaps beyond any RSS Reader I’ve used to date. Check it out.
This talk looks awesome. It’s on exactly what the title states and is held on May 1st by Bob Sutton’s d.school class at Stanford. The best part is that it’s free. Check it out, hope to see you there.
This is one of the most stunning talks I have seen in a while. It’s been circulating around the internet on blogs everywhere in the wake of TED 2008. I never gave it a chance until today. Enjoy not only a stellar presentation, but an emotional discussion by a neuroanatomist describing the day of her stroke and her observations.
Not to ruin it, but you really have to watch it through to the last second.
