Chemical inventory is one of those things that few in cheminformatics think about but many in chemistry do. Having worked in research labs in both industry and academia, it seems that chemical inventory, and particularly the software/hardware to manage it, is one of those universal problems in chemistry. What Problem? What problem, you may ask? The problem of finding a sample of a given substance present somewhere in a research lab.

As announced on their Public Policy Blog, Google has made available for free download both images and full text of a large number of US Patents and Patent Applications. This information has always been available - but at a price. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has offered the ability to subscribe to new patent files, as well as their collection of backfiles, in DVD format for a price ranging in the thousands of dollars.

One of the bits of feedback I’ve received during the development of Chemvoice is to break the site’s content down into categories. Fair enough, but what exactly should these categories be and how many of them? Chemistry is the central science, and nowhere is that more apparent than in its long tail. For the unfamiliar, Chemvoice is a social chemistry news service.

I’ve gotten just a few too many of these kinds of these DOI fail messages lately and it’s starting to get old. Call me crazy, but when a DOI resolution still doesn’t work after one month and there’s not so much as a confirmation that the problem is being looked at (or that maybe I’m doing something wrong), that’s no way to serve customers or build confidence. As part of an ongoing project, I’ve found numerous examples of failed DOI resolutions.

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Longtime readers of this blog know that I think JavaScript for Cheminformatics is an idea with a lot of potential. Recently, I ran across JChemHub, an open source toolkit for developing client-side cheminformatics applications. JChemHub is written from scratch in JavaScript using the Google Closure library. Although documentation on the project is sparse, I was able to get started by following the instructions in the README file.

The Web has enormous potential to help each of us become better at what we do. It stands above any other medium for its ability to promote learning through directly sharing information. Unrealized Potential But to use the Web to its fullest potential requires both a service and users of that service that “get it”. For too long, the services have been lacking. This has led to a lack of chemists who understand what they have to gain.

Ever since Warren DeLano died, something has been bothering me: I never told him how much I valued what he was doing. What an inspiration he was to me for his energy and vision. How gutsy I thought he was to go against conventional wisdom with actions. How I wanted to emulate his success in business. There’s no excuse for this. And there are others besides Warren who I’m benefiting from - many of whom I don’t know.

Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten. Sieh dir dieses Video auf www.youtube.com an oder aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein sollte. Don’t let the first few seconds of this video put you off. If you stick to the end, it explains a remarkable business model for bringing experts together with those with a problem to solve.

Check out Ford’s Thoughts on Horses; also see his autobiography.

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