Science & Web2.0 - slowly coming together.

Sometimes it seems there are not enough hours in the day. I had planned to spend a part of this weekend having a good look at Yahoo's Pipes (as it were) and seeing how I could integrate RSS feeds form various scientific sources - including BioMed Central - and see what happened as a result. However, domesticity is a cruel mistress and instead I spent the weekend painting, painting and re-painting and touching-up bits I missed the first 3 times.

However, the weekend did throw up several blog postings which indicate that science journalists and bloggers (if not the scientists themselves yet) are noticing that there might just be something useful in this interactive web2.0 thingy. I think we have only just touched the surface with what is possible, but whether it is practical, desirable and useful, remains to be seen. The inherent conservatism of the typical scientist is one thing not in favour of blogs and social networks being rapidly adopted [edit: for research purposes/collaborations], but the newer generation of scientists who have grown up with MySpace and their own blogs may be about to change things fast.

• The value of blogs in academia - Flip Tomato
• Using Twitter productively - Lifehack [I'd also be interested to hear if anyone is using MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, or any other social network environment for scientific purposes]
• One link, many link, social link - Dave Bacon, The Quantum Pontiff

Update: Seems I missed one good link - this recent editorial in Nature Medicine.