Closing Time

Closing time - every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Semisonic

The Reasons

It may not be come as a surprise to some, but mEDkit is shutting down. I've reached the point where; 

• I'm only getting only a little enjoyment from writing and releasing my thoughts to the world 
• It's  taking up time that could be spent doing activities that are more fun.

In addition, it seems that a troll is on the loose.  Normally, I would just ignore the average troll, but this one is very annoying indeed. Leaving obscure comments (which have since been deleted), and signing up to all sorts of random stuff with my email address. So that's another little contributing factor to mEDkit's demise. I don't exactly know why I was chosen, but I guess it is all just a bit of fun for them. No doubt said troll will be very happy now indeed.

Thanks

Most importantly, I would like to thank all of those who took the time to read my blog and left comments of support, value and intrigue.

So to the rest of you MedBloggers out there, hold the line and keep up the good writing.

For anyone who happens to stumble on this remanent of a blog, here  are a couple of blogs I would like to recommend (Oct 2009).

Life in the Fast Lane - Written by a few Doctors in Perth, it's all about Emergency Medicine, E-Learning & Health 2.0

Dragonfly Initiative - A medical student who shares some of the daily events of medical school along with some personal insights.

Captain Atopic - Follow the adventures of a medical student who expresses his thoughts in a quirky and entertaining way. Definitely a must read.

Alternatively, checkout the Australian Medblog Roll. It maybe outdated, but there's bound to be a couple of blogs that are still plodding along.

Some Posts to Read

• Applying to Medical School
• Alternative Route to Medicine
• Art of Learning Anatomy
• GAMSAT: The day before Tomorrow
• Free GAMSAT Material 
• Medical Books on the Go

Google Mashup - Use Keyboardr to find those results.

Google seems to be the first port of call for a lot people (at least Gen Y), and although their suite of software is nice it can always be made a little better right. Or alternatively, mutated into something more relevant for a particular usergroup.

Google Mashups aren't a new thing; more recently we have had mashups like the Swine Flu Tracker (a combination of google maps and swine flu data) Elicit (Desktop Blog Client) and search engine mashups like Googfram.

Keyboardr
The lasted mashup I've come across is Keyboardr. Keyboardr combines information from Google (including blog and image search), Wikipedia, YouTube and provides results on the fly. That is, basically as soon as you start typing, results will appear. No need to go hit those search or I'm feeling lucky buttons. This is the most impressive feature of Keyboardr, it's speed.

Take a look at the video below or better yet at the site to get an idea of how Keyboardr operates.

keyboardr.com from Julius Eckert on Vimeo.

Personally, I like this Google Mashup and if you are looking for a simple homepage this might be the way to go. It is very minimalist and load time is virtually nil.

If I had one feature request it would be the ability to add other search engines. For example, since I have to do a lot of science research at the moment, having any area dedicated to Pubmed results would be quite convenient. However, I imagine (though I'm not a computer expert) such a creation would require the release of some sort of api by the search provider, to get results to appear within view.

Science, what is it good for?

Dara O'Briain sets the record straight about the public understanding of science.