Blog
Is DAS the answer?
I blogged previously about my rule of 80% duplication, 20% innovation. That post discussed why there are so many gene-centric portals available which all present mostly-overlapping annotation and data. I attributed this phenomenon to the lack of a mechanism for data...
BioGPS screencast tutorials
A good way to learn about BioGPS and its capabilities is to just search for your gene or genes of interest, and then poke around with all the tabs and buttons. BioGPS is pretty hard to break, so don't worry about doing anything "wrong".On the other hand, if you'd like...
ScienceOnline’09: Community intelligence applied to gene annotation
Travel and real life have kept this blog pretty silent for a few weeks, but it will resume on BioGPS-related themes soon. In the mean time, we're all set up to lead a session on "Community intelligence applied to gene annotation" at the ScienceOnline'09 meeting in...
80% duplication, 20% innovation
As we develop BioGPS, many people have asked, why develop another gene portal? With all the already-existing websites that display gene annotation, where does BioGPS fit into this crowded landscape?I think this question begs a closer look at why there are so many gene...
Recruiting for a Web UI Programmer
Are you a computer programmer who's looking for your next challenging project in a great work environment? Know of anyone who might fit the bill? If so, please check out this new position we're currently recruiting for in the BioGPS team:...
Is application stagnation useful?
In my last post about the Law of Inevitable Stagnation, I proposed that many (most?) web-based scientific applications eventually go stale. I mentioned this to a colleague and SymAtlas user recently, and he had an interesting suggestion. He wondered if SymAtlas wasn't...
SymAtlas and the Law of Inevitable Stagnation
GNF has maintained the very popular SymAtlas gene portal for many years now. Given the success of that site, what motivated us to start anew and create BioGPS? The answer is simple and can be described by what I'll call the Law of Inevitable Stagnation. Let me...
The future of SymAtlas
We know that we have a pretty loyal base of SymAtlas users. And it's because of that knowledge that we don't tread lightly on making changes to this well-used resource. But SymAtlas is getting a bit long in the tooth, and at some point in the foreseeable future it...
The Gene Wiki
I guess many others have blogged about it, and now that we have a blog of our own, seems like we should join the crowd. Recently, we published a paper in PLoS Biology describing an effort we call the Gene Wiki. The Gene Wiki is an informal collection of Wikipedia...
Problems with BioGPS?
Just a quick note that we discovered some access issues for some small (hopefully) percentage of users. (A problem with DNS, for the computer-inclined...) Just wanted to let people know that if you were getting a "server not found" error when viewing a gene report...