Smart content & solution for life science researchers in ScienceDirect via 95014

EPA is listening to its users

"EPA is holding an on-line discussion among state, tribe, and other federal partners of EPA, as well as the public to foster collaboration on information access. For this discussion, we are using a blog which is a more interactive and personal form of technology. Everyone is invited to use this site to identify and share their best resources, tools, and ideas for improving access to EPA’s environmental information. This is a key part of the National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information – working with you to enhance information access."

This is another good example of using groundswell for research and development. Via Christina Liss

Involving users in product development a la Google

Scispace: Social Networking Site for Scientist

Scispace was developed "between members of the NIEeS and the eMinerals and MaterialsGrid projects."

It's all about scientific communication and collaboration.

Solutions and Change

This is the election year in the US and democratic candidates are using "solutions" and "change" in their campaign slogans.

To stay in the spirit of the elections, there has not been any post for a while, I wasn't campaigning with Clinton or Obama, but I've been swamped with launching a new research product (illumin8) where R&D knowledge workers can search for "solutions" (here is some illumin8 coverage) and due a "change" in my role within Elsevier and moving from one great product to another. Whatever the change is, the really simple sidi, will stay "simple" and try to continue posting time permitting....

Believe in it and deploy Semantic Web applications

Here is a good example from Harper's on how semantic web can enhance information delivery and brings insights. If you have subscription, read the "Semantic Web in Action" at Scientific American. (Indeed this is available on the web in you search a bit heard)You'll find many interesting cases studies and companies who are prototyping and deploying semantic web applications. If I were running an online journal delivery platform in STM publishing , I would definitely allocate some resources to integrate semantic web applications in it. You may want to listen to John Udell's interviewwith Richard Wallis who is a technology evangelist for Talis.

2Collab: Just did it

The young turks in Amsterdam just did it beautifully.... 2Collab is live

"This is a new collaboration tool designed specifically for professional researchers – so those people who spend most of their time banging their heads against a brick wall and trying to find those vital bits of information! The history of science is based on working together - It’s all about sharing and learning. And this is what 2collab is all about." via 2Collab Blog

Here is Richard Ackerman's review and Deepak's post on 2collab

New face of e-training: Elsevier Training Desk

Nop, our new TrainingDesk is not your father's Oldmobiles.

The new TrainingDesk includes a blog by Gali Halevi, a wiki where customers can collaborate and share their training experiences; and plenty of tutorials and presentations about Embase, Scopus, Science Direct and Engineering Village. I think this is a great attempt to make training more interactive and get customers input and contributions. I can see the wiki turning into a great collection of training materials including videos which are created by our academic and corporate librarians, and students. It's refreshing to see that our customers can access to all these products' training materials in one location. Also we are taking the training to a new level i.e from teaching boolean search to topic-focused online seminars. Now let's see how our customers will use the site.