Mathblogging.org launches using the ScienceSeeker Codebase

Our friends at Mathblogging.org have upgraded their site with a fantastic array of new features. We can say that with some knowledge because they are using SubjectSeeker, the same open-source codebase used to run ScienceSeeker!

We believe that the SubjectSeeker code can be used to collect news and discussion on almost any topic, and this is just the first example.

We have been working for several months with Mathblogging to help them move to the new platform, and we couldn't be more thrilled with the results. Here's an excerpt from their official announcement:

To celebrate ScienceOnline 2013, we’re very happy to announce the launch of the new and improved mathblogging.org!

Among our new features are:

• Our editors! A group of dedicated bloggers who regularly share their favorite pieces, right on the front page — it’s like our Weekly Picks, only better!


• A user system – register an account & claim your blog today, add comments to posts just like our editors do and have them tweeted right away.  And you can look forward to more features in the near future!


• An easy way to add sites: just paste the link and we’ll do the rest.


• A better search — easy to get to, easy to work with, easy to find stuff.


• A robust API — to build personalized searches, feeds and whatever you can think of (with more in the making).


• Moar social media!!11!eleventy!! — three new twitter accounts will give you the Editor Picks, the Notes and the firehose feed, with more to come in the future. Google+ and other platforms soon to follow.

Congratulations to Mathblogging.org! We look forward to working with them -- and many other sites -- in the future!

ScienceSeeker updated with new features

The ScienceSeeker site was updated today with some great new features. Users can now set up their own profiles with photos and descriptions. Users can tag any post with the topic of their choice, and users can create and follow groups based on their interests. In the future we plan on expanding these features to help users find other users and groups with similar interests to their own...and we'll have a big announcement on Friday which will depend heavily on this new functionality!

Details on the new features (from our help page):

Using Tags

ScienceSeeker organizes information in two different ways. Topics are the general subject areas that each source site uses. Each site can have two topics. For example, the Bipolar Beat blog is categorized under "Psychology."

Tags are used to categorize individual posts. For example, Bipolar Beat usually makes posts that are more specific than just the general topic of "Psychology", and ScienceSeeker captures all the tags that the blogger used to categorize the post. Click on the "..." icon next to any post on our site to see the post profile page, and you will see a list of all the tags the author added to the post. For this post, the authors also tagged it with "Career," "disability", "bipolar disorder", "social security disability" and "ticket to work." Click on any of those tags to see a list of all posts from every source on ScienceSeeker using that tag.

Note: Any tag that starts with a Capital Letter is actually a Topic, and will bring up all posts from sources using that topic in addition to individual posts using the tag.

You can also add your own tags to a post.

• Log in to ScienceSeeker


• Click on the icon for the post you want to tag


• Click the "+ Add Tag" button.


• Add the tag you would like in the dialog that appears.


• Choose "Public" if you want everyone to see the tag, and "Private" if the tag is just for your personal use.

Using Groups

Groups are a powerful tool for following and sharing posts about topics that interest you most. You can create, follow, and edit groups, and soon we will add even more ways to interact through groups.

• To see the most recently-formed groups, click on the Groups tab at the top of the ScienceSeeker home page


• Clicking on a group name will show you the most recent items from that group, let you know who manages the group, and shows you the tags that apply to the group. For example, the group "Some big bang posts" tracks posts with the tag "big bang."


• If you are logged in to your ScienceSeeker account, you can recommend, comment on, or follow the group by clicking on the appropriate link at the top of the group page.


• To create your own group, Login and hover over your user name to bring up a menu. Click on the "My Groups" link.


• Type the name of your group and a description.


• Click on "Create Group".


• Add the tags you would like this group to track. You can use tags you create, or official ScienceSeeker topics. When you type in a topic name it will appear capitalized, and will bring up both individual posts with that tag and all posts for sources categorized with that topic.


• Optionally you can upload an image to serve as the header for the group. Important: The image must be at least 1000 x 125 pixels. You can crop larger images to correct size, but smaller images will not work.


• To modify or delete a group, click on the "+" sign next to the group name in your list under "my groups".

Jason Goldman named Associate Editor

I'm pleased to announce the addition of Jason Goldman to ScienceSeeker's management team as Associate Editor. In the coming months, Jason will work with ScienceSeeker on a number of projects, from coordinating our content editors to a super-secret, super-exciting project that will be announced at ScienceOnline 2013 at the end of the month.

Jason is is a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. For several years now, he has been a dynamo in the world of science online. His blog The Thoughtful Animal never fails to engage readers and has received numerous honors. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, BBC Future, The Guardian, The Best Science Writing Online 2012, and elsewhere. He edited the 2010 edition of The Open Laboratory.

Jason has also been a content editor here at ScienceSeeker and at ResearchBlogging.org, sifting through hundreds of posts on psychology and neuroscience to highlight the most interesting and innovative research and discussion.

Jason's own research focuses on the evolution and architecture of the mind, and how early experiences affect innate knowledge systems.

Please join me in welcoming Jason to the ScienceSeeker team!

ScienceSeeker on Google Currents, SciVerse and ImpactStory

ScienceSeeker is not just a website to find interesting science posts, it’s a huge open database, and we are constantly working on new and better ways to let you access and filter it, here are some of the cool things that you can do with our API:

Google Currents

[caption id="attachment_434" align="alignright" width="169"] Scan this QR link to get the Google Currents app.[/caption]

If you visited ScienceSeeker from your tablet or phone lately, or if you were playing around with the size of your browser window, you probably noticed that our new design is responsive, it adapts to the size of your screen, you can visit the same page from any device and it will change appropriately. If that’s not enough, our editor Raphael Ndem has something for you, the Google Currents Edition of ScienceSeeker, an app for your mobile device that will let you browse our feeds and read the amazing scientific content online on a magazine format.

SciVerse

ScienceSeeker has worked with OpenHelix to bring you a SciVerse app that lets you generate citations for the peer-reviewed article your are viewing or find other posts talking about it. To read more about how it works, you can visit OpenHelix’s blog post

ImpactStory

The ImpactStory team has integrated ScienceSeeker into their code to help you find all the blog posts citing a peer-reviewed article

ScienceSeeker launches massive upgrade powered by NASW grant

Today we launch the most significant update to ScienceSeeker ever. Instead of just following the 1200+ sources in our database, now you can easily search them to find reliable discussion of today's most vexing scientific issues.

[caption id="attachment_377" align="alignnone" width="500"] icon next to any post to bring up the post profile page. There, you'll see topics chosen by the post author. You can click on any of them to see other posts with the same topic — there are already several thousand topics in our database!

All of this was enabled by a $35,000 Idea Grant to ScienceSeeker by the National Association of Science Writers (NASW). It's among the largest Idea Grants the NASW has ever awarded, and the money will enable us to add even more functionality to the site in the coming months. Next on the agenda is additional integration with social media sites. We'd like to tabulate mentions on Twitter and Facebook and incorporate that into how articles are recommended. We also plan to allow you to convert any search into a feed, so you can track mentions of a particular article or topic without having to visit ScienceSeeker.

Here's a detailed rundown of all the new features on ScienceSeeker.org.

• Site redesigned from the bottom up. We have moved from a WordPress codebase to our own hand-coded system, which streamlines the site and makes everything much faster. The visual look of the site has also been enhanced, so users can easily see where the most important information is, and find details when they need them.


• New Search tool allows users to find scientific discussion on nearly any topic. In addition to the search bar found on every page, users can search source sites (blogs, news sites, and so on) and posts, and create feeds based on topics they are interested in.


• Streamlined login and user profiles. New users can register using their Twitter accounts, and the login interface now remembers your page to make your interaction with the site seamless. You can also upload profile photos and edit your user profile.


• Post profile page. Each post now has a profile page that lists post-level topics specified by the author (using categories or tags when they write the post). The topics are clickable, so you can easily find other posts with the same topics.


• Notifications. Authors can choose to be notified by email whenever one of their posts is chosen as an Editor's Pick. (If you'd like to activate this feature, just check the appropriate box on your Settings page).


• Post Profile badge. We've created a new badge that can be placed in any post, linking back to the ScienceSeeker profile of that post. The badge is automatically updated when ScienceSeeker identifies a citation on your post, or when it is chosen as an Editor's Pick.


• Pubmed and ArXiv support. Our citation generator now searches three databases to locate research articles. If you are an author and would like to add a citation of peer-reviewed research, just click the "Create Citation" link, enter a few words from the title of the article you'd like to cite, and our system will find any references to those words from the CrossRef, PubMed, and arXiv databases, covering nearly all peer-reviewed scientific publications. If your source isn't found, there is now an option to manually enter the citation to create a properly-formatted reference in the industry-standard COinS format, recognizable by ScienceSeeker, but also by other resources such as Mendeley, Zotero, and ResearchBlogging.org

You'll find dozens of other enhancements in this release; there are simply too many to enumerate. Even this blog has gotten a facelift! We encourage you to poke around the site, click on links, recommend your favorite posts, and make notes to share with others.

And don't forget to follow our four Twitter feeds (@SciSeeker, @SciSeekEds, @SciSeekNotes, and @SciSeekFeed), our Facebook page, and check out our Google+ page, which you can access via plus.scienceseeker.org.

If there are other features you'd like to see on ScienceSeeker, let us know -- either via social media, our contact page, or in the comments section below.