Better living through web technology!
Hello everyone. This is my second blog post, and I think it’s appropriate to address how the latest web technology can benefit us as researchers by highlighting some extremely cool web sites and other resources. Before I even start, I’m compelled to note that I doubt I know even 10\% of the latest and greatest capabilities on the web, but I am conscious of the fact that a lot has changed since the “early days” of the internet, when e-mail and web browsing made up 100\% of my own internet activity. While web browsing is increasingly powerful, I am starting to have serious doubts that e-mail represents a productive way of communicating. In fact, it may in some ways be counter-productive, not just because of spam, but because of over-flowing inboxes and the fact that it can take 10 emails to resolve something that can be discussed on the phone in 5 minutes.
But I digress. Over the last year or so I have discovered some wonderful resources that I benefit from, and it’s my goal to make the Nanoprobe Network similarly useful for SPM researchers.
One major inspiration for me is the site iMechanica. This website gives every member a “Diary” (a blog), where people can ask and answer questions about mechanics (the study of how materials respond to forces), discuss issues, share preprints, discuss articles in the regular “Journal Club”, and more. Anyone can join, and the membership is over 6000 strong with nearly 3000 posts and nearly 7000 comments. This is an extremely vigorous community, and it is the “go to” place on the web for information on engineering mechanics.
A second resource that addresses topics close to my heart is AFRESH (Atomic-scale Friction Research and Education Synergy Hub). AFRESH is, from their website description, a “NSF-sponsored electronic virtual organization for the atomic-scale friction community. AFRESH is a user-driven cyberinfrastructure for sharing, generating, archiving, linking and discussing data, tools, events, information, knowledge and other content about atomic-scale friction.”
AFRESH has a growing bibliography of atomic-scale friction articles with links to the articles, and comments on the articles themselves. The ability for the users to comment on articles is particularly useful – instead of having to wade through many articles on a topic of interest, these comments can help point out which one the most important work to focus on.
Finally, I am becoming a fan of Google Docs. This allows a group of people, e.g., collaborators on a project, to collectively edit a Word-like document on the web. It’s much easier than e-mailing a Word document, full of “track changes” edits, back and forth. I have found this to be useful for a couple collaborative projects and I’m interested to know if others also find it useful, and what additional features they like.
That’s an intro. I plan to write more in future posts. Comments on this blog post are welcome!
