The next generation of the Knowtator NLP annotation plug in for Protege: http://code.google.com/p/ehost/

The next generation of digital reader for scientists is here

I use a pretty great digital reader (the Irex DR1000SW:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=irex+dr1000sw&page=&utm_source=opensearch)

While the DR1000 is a good reader it lacks wireless connectivity and a
more friendly user interface. I have been waiting for "the Que" to come
out for some time - it is now available for pre-orders. Check it out:

http://www.que.com/

http://www.youtube.com/results?orig_query=plastic+logic&search_query=plastic-logic-reader&orig_query_src=2&suggested_categories=28%2C25%2C26

Drug Profile Interoperability Project

The Drug Profile Interoperability Project
(http://h2anetwork.org/ProjectDocs/DPI/DPI_Framework.html) is a very
interesting contribution to the Health 2.0
(http://www.health2blog.com/2009/12/health-20-does-webinars.html) movement. It demonstrates how a patient can allow their medication information to be securely shared among web services; one of which (the PharmaSURVEYOR) informs the user about potential medication safety issues. The issues include the risk of potential adverse events, side effects, and drug interactions. It will very important to study how accurate this information is and how well it is received and applied by patients. I think that the side-effect/adverse event information is likely to contain considerable noise since I suspect that it is derived primarily from adverse events that were thought to be observed during a clinical trial. These kinds of reports have about the same scientific validity as anecdotal evidence and are known to be noisy due to under-reporting, external trends, and innocent by-stander effects (see http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/583670_5).

Google tool for surveys that automatically stores results

I discovered that it is possible to use Google docs to create form-based surveys that automatically write to a Google doc spreasheet:

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-sharing-spreadsheets-start.html

This is very useful; I used it to create a simple survey to scheduling a meeting. I found the simple interface easy but also a bit confusing. The "grid" object should be provide some options including one that allow columns to behave like checkboxes instead of radio-buttons.

Tips on being an effective mentee

Here is a short article with replies on how to be an effective mentee:
http://ben.casnocha.com/2008/04/six-habits-of-h.html

Some of this advice seems especially useful as I develop an NIH Career
Development award.

Adobe Flex Alpha 5 for Linux

Adobe is providing a limited Alpha version of Flex Builder to the Linux community. See: http://blogs.adobe.com/ashutosh/2009/11/adobe_flex_builder_linux_updat.html

Great UI prototyping tool

I discovered this sketch / UI prototyping tool today and found it very useful:

http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html