Test of google-code-prettify: class Voila { public: // Voila static const string VOILA = "Voila"; // will not interfere with embedded tags.

I learnt today that my Elsevier Challenge entry didn't make the final cut. This wasn't unexpected. In the interests of "open science" (blame Paulo Nuin) here is the feedback I received from the judges: I think this is a pretty fair evaluation of my entry. I was making a case for what could be done, rather than providing a specific bit of kit that could make this happen right now.

One advantage of flying to the US is the chance to do some reading. At Newark (EWR) I picked up Guy Kawasaki's "Reality Check", which is a fun read. You can get a flavour of the book from this presentation Guy gave in 2006. While at MIT for the Elsevier Challenge I was browsing in the MIT book shop and stumbled across "Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge" by Frenchman Jean-Noël Jeanneney. It's, um, very French.

Stata Center. MIT Originally uploaded by Roderic Page Quick post about the Elsevier Challenge, which took place yesterday in the wonderful Stata Center at MIT. It was a great experience.

I'm in the US on UK time, so this is probably a bad idea to write this, but the paper by Malte Ebach et al. ("O Cladistics, Where Art Thou?", doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2008.00225.x) in the latest Cladistics just annoys me too much.

The latest post on the EOL blog (Biodiversity in a rapidly changing world) really, really annoys me. It claims that Nope, I suggest it demonstrates just how limited EOL is. If I view the page for the red lionfish I get an out of date map from GBIF that shows a very limited distribution, and doesn't show the introductions in Florida and the Bahamas (I have to wade through text to find reference to the Florida introduction, and the page doesn't

The Science Commons has released a short video by Jesse Dylan, who made the Yes We Can video.

Quick note to say how much I like the programmers' Q & A site Stack Overflow. I've only asked two questions, but the responses have been rapid and useful. I found out about Stack Overflow by listening to the Stack Overflow podcast episodes on IT Conversations (which carry a lot of other podcasts as well). For a wannabe geek, these podcasts are a great source of ideas.

Among the many weaknesses of my challenge demo is the way it simply dumps out a list of sequences (see comments on the demo.

I've submitted my entry for the Elsevier Grand Challenge. The paper describing the entry is available from Nature Precedings (doi:10.1038/npre.2008.2579.1). The web site demo is at http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/. I'm now officially knackered.

One byproduct of playing with the Challenge Demo is that I come across some rather surprising results.