Nodalpoint is back, as a podcast

If you read this blog than there is a very high chance that you know about Nodalpoint. It was one of the first (community) blogs related to science and where many bioinformatic bloggers, myself included, started out. Over the years, the site lost usage as people started their own independent blogs and Greg Tyrelle, the creator of Nodalpoint, eventually archived it.

The main website is back, in a way. Greg decided to start up a podcast series to discuss issues around bioinformatics and I guess whatever else he might be interested in. Go check it out. The first episode is a conversation with Neil Saunders, one of Nodalpoint's early users (blog, friendfeed, twitter) .

Among many other things, they talk about the lack of traction that open science has among scientists. I agree with some of the points that were raised regarding the small size niche of each specific research problem. It is not the full answer but it probably plays a role. There are so few people that have the skills and interest to tackle the same problem that creating a online community around any given scientific question becomes hard. Still, if we have not come together to openly share results and methods we have at least witness the creation of many online communities that are working very well to discuss all sort of different scientific issues  (ex. Friendfeed-Life Scientists, Biostart, Nature Network, etc).

Quick Links

Deepak recorded his first podcast. Even if I am not a big fan of podcasts, I found it interesting to hear. Maybe it could serve as platform for a radio version of his blog. The idea of doing interviews would be really nice. In general I prefer reading because I can do it much faster than listening. Next year, when I go back to doing more bench work I will probably try consuming podcast while working.

(Via Deepak, Roland, and Konrad) Freebase is a very promising new web service. For those who have heard about semantic web, it will look familiar. They want to organize data by allowing users to add metadata to the information stored on the site. This will be great for aggregation of content and data mining. For science it could serve as place to deposit and organize data for collaborative projects.

(Via BioHacking) Microsoft has announced the winners of the first award for computational challenges in Synthetic Biology. Six projects were awarded a total of $570,000 (USD) to develop tools for synthetic biology.

(Via Jason Stajich) My own favorite model organism database (SGD) has created a wiki for community annotation. Anyone interested in S. cerevisiae biology, methods, reagents and strains can go there and help populate the wiki.