Simon Twigger @ MCW

Following on from the presentation a few days ago I’ve created a quick screencast on SciVee showing how to use Google’s Notebook and Reader to manage information online. I use the example of SATB1, a gene that was recently published in Nature as being a ‘master regulator’ involved in the progression of breast cancer. When we find something interesting like this in a paper or online, there are potentially three steps that follow on:

1. Find out more about this gene
2. As we discover something interesting we want to store or track that piece of information somehow
3. One we’ve got a feel for what’s going on, we’d like to stay on top of new developments.

This video shows how to use some of Google’s free tools to tackle these three steps.With the recent publication of STAB1’s role in Breast Cancer as a backdrop I show how to use Notebook to take ‘clippings’ of web pages and organize them in a single location. This is a distinct improvement over trying to bookmark everything in your browser or print out the web page or (heaven forbid!) write down the URL. I then show how you can use RSS feeds from PubMed to get a feed of current and new literature relating to SATB1 and also show how to use Google News and Google Blog search to track down other online information relating to the gene. Once you’ve set these feeds up once in Google Reader (or another news reader/aggregator such as Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, etc) then the RSS feeds you new information on these topics without you having to lift a finger (other than check your newsreader, its not entirely effort free!).Its possible that the compression on SciVee has made viewing some of the text rather tricky. If so, let me know and I can upload a higher resolution version here for people to see things in more detail. Here are some links to topics I didn’t cover such as installing Notebook or getting a Google account.

Once you get into Notebook it has some nice Tagging and sharing features that make it a useful collaboration tool. Similarly Reader can share your newsfeeds with other people making it potentially very useful for a group of people (your lab) to stay on top of an area of literature. If you give these tools a try and have any observations it would be great to hear about how it all works for you in practice.

Have fun!