TechCrunch has just posted an article on Ologeez!. Ologeez! is an alternative front-end to PubMed (but has plans to include other databases as well) and mixed in with ‘social’ features.

Two things sprang to mind when reading this coverage:

  • Alf Eaton already has a pretty impressive ‘version’ that has been around for years – HubMed. It was nice to see someone else highlighting this in the ‘comments’ section.
  • Aside from HubMed there are loads of other PubMed ‘versions’ – yet it was this one that gets a mention in TechCrunch – a Stanford bias perhaps?

You can see Ologeez! by clicking here. It’ll be interesting to see if it succeeds, I have my doubts. Our playing with this sort of thing (courtesy of gwagle) was an interesting failure. As mentioned above there are numerous other websites offering social functionality coupled to PubMed, yet none are successful. I can’t see anything in Ologeez! that makes me think they’re particularly special. Perhaps the TechCrunch link will help (it certainly can’t hurt).

I suppose one day someone will crack it….

One quick thought, instead of having one site trying to monopolise this social space, why not get together a significant number of ‘players’ in the area – be it medicine, be it biomedical – and create a single space that all users can contribute to. Imagine if TRIP, Cochrane, Medline, NICE, CRD, eMedicine, BMJ etc etc all worked to one standard and created a single ‘space’ – now that would be powerful and powerfully useful. One to ponder.