Ligand docking memories
February 29, 2008
While I was at Accelrys one of the things that I tried to push was an increased use of force fields, MD and more physical approaches for molecular recognition problems like ligand docking. It’s always good to see some of those thoughts and early proofs-of-concept become reality
Technorati Tags: CHARMM, Ligand Docking, Flexible Docking
Why should you get a free 23andme test?
February 28, 2008
Loic LeMeur posed the question on Seesmic as part of a giveaway for one 23andme genotyping test. I happened to be on at the time and looks like I made the 12 finalists. After watching all 12, there is little chance that I’ll make the cut. But you never know 
Technorati Tags: 23andme, Seesmic, Loic Le Meur
Data Portability needs a new logo
February 22, 2008
As some of you might have heard, the data portability group needs a new logo following a C&D from Red Hat. Personally, I think that it’s a brilliant idea. In one fell swoop, the organization gets love from those who root for the little guy, more mindshare and potentially a cool new logo (I did like the old one, but it was a little too close to the Fedora one for comfort).
So if any of you have more design skills than me, do to Chris Saad’s blog and find out about the Data Portability Logo Competition
Technorati Tags: data portability, Red Hat
Self assembly: Some happenings in the bbgm verse
February 2, 2008
Just Science week is coming up, so time to try and clear up some backlog this weekend, so that one can focus on science for a few days. Lets start with some bbgm-related stuff.
You’ve already heard about skillbit and the BioBricks workshop at UCSF. I also hope to make it to the BIL conference in Monterey on March 2, but the logistics are going to be a little tough.
Some of you might have noticed the Wiki link up on navigation bar. It was supposed to go up some months ago, but I am running about 4-6 months behind schedule on a few things. A couple of things delayed the Wiki more than expected; choice of Wiki platform and how it was going to be used.
I tried out 5-6 Wiki platforms, and some of them were really good. I was really enamored by Deki Wiki, Social Text and PBwiki, and almost went with Deki Wiki, but in the end the OpenID and Creative Commons support on Wikispaces, and Jean-Claude’s successful use of the platform did the trick. I needed something simple, embedded media friendly, and capable of handling equations. Wikispaces did the trick.
For a long time I’ve used Backpack to capture thoughts and list projects, but some of those would benefit from being available in a Wiki format. Hopefully others can add material. The Wiki and blog should mesh well together as well over time, but we’ll have to see about that. For now, the security is tight, but that might change. If you’re a regular reader and want to contribute, just holler.
bbgm.tv now has it’s own domain (which resolves to a page in Wordpress), and carries the Mogulus, Ustream and Kyte players. Based on experience, Ustream will be the preferred platform for casual live streaming, while Mogulus will be where I plan to carry any regular broadcasts. Still need to reconfigure hardware (going all Mac + the cloud), hence the delay.
I am slowly getting a little involved with the data portability project, for now as an evangelist, which pretty much means that I’ll be blogging about it and helping with looking at PR material etc. There’s lots of techies involved, but no science types, so I thought I’d see if I can contribute in any way. Web standards, interoperability and simple methods are all something that are important in these parts, hence the plunge. Lets see how it works out. For starters, bbgm now supports OpenID (Wordpress always been XFN compliant) and now has a FOAF profile loaded too, just in time for Google’s social graph API.
Technorati Tags: Wiki, Data Portability, Wikispaces, bbgm.tv
skillbit: Connecting people with data
January 28, 2008
Not quite bioinformatics, but of all the topics that came up on the rather chaotic first night of Seattle Startup Weekend, a “match.com for enterprises” was the one that appealed to me most of all. At the time, it was not the first option, but after our original idea crashed and burned, the team got to work on what ended up becoming skillbit (current version can be found at beta.skillbit.com), a service for small organizations to connect people with capabilities.
I came back last night exhausted, satisfied, with lots of new friends and discussions around topics ranging from social experiments to running simulations on GPUs to the best place to have coffee. As a stockholder and co-founder of skillbit, I am definitely interested in watching the effort succeed, but regardless, for me at least, this was a very satisfying weekend.
Technorati Tags: skillbit, seattle startup weekend, startup weekend
