The Wild Type focuses on the impact of design on scientific databases from the perspective of a bioinformation architect.


Open subjects include graphic and user interface design; data visualization; infographics; and social media integration.

Bioinformatics is dead! Long live bioinformatics!

June 12, 2008

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2008/06/12/bioinformatics-is-dead-long-live-bioinformatics/’;username=’tharris’;A few years ago, my boss Lincoln Stein prognosticated the end of bioinformatics.
According to Google Trends he just might be onto something. Searches for bioinformatics have dropped in half in the past four years. C’est incroyable! Not surprisingly, the top-ten sites for searches for bioinformatics are all in India.

Gory details available [...]

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Web-based time tracking solutions

June 2, 2008

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2008/06/02/web-based-time-tracking/’;username=’tharris’;I’ve used pretty much every time tracking, billing, and invoicing tool available for the Mac.
But hey, enough with the desktop apps already. I’m an on-the-go guy and need a mobile, web-based solution. With rounded corners, too, please.
Here are two options that I’ve discovered.
14dayz.com
Goofy name, but feature rich. Gratis and paid plans available, restricted [...]

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Social media and career advancement

June 1, 2008

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2008/06/01/social-media-and-career-advancement/’;username=’tharris’;Burgeoning scientists take note: Mitch Joel at Twist Image / Six Pixels of Separation has a great post on using social media for career development.

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Web2.0 organization of your reference library

May 29, 2008

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2008/05/29/web20-organization-of-your-reference-library/’;username=’tharris’;I’ve recently started using CiteULike. Bad name, great concept. It applies web 2.0 design patterns to management of your reference library: tags, comments, sharing, etc.
You can extract information on references from many common reference sites like PubMed and, and, erm, is there anything else? References can be exported in a number of formats [...]

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The role of social networking in biological databases

May 14, 2008

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2008/05/14/the-role-of-social-networking-in-biological-databases/’;username=’tharris’;You’d have to be hiding under a rock to not know of social networking sites like FaceBook or MySpace.
But you might not be familiar with social networking tools like Ning which let anyone set up their own social network.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what role social networking might play in biological databases.
Can we [...]

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Request / bug ticketing

May 23, 2007

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2007/05/23/request-bug-ticketing/’;username=’tharris’;I’m exploring the use of RT at WB. Here are some quick notes on installation:

./configure –prefix=/usr/local/rt3 \
–with-apachectl=/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl

make testdep
sudo make install

Set up etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm…
See the RT wiki for more details.

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Inkscape: open source SVG editor

April 2, 2007

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2007/04/02/inkscape-open-source-svg-editor/’;username=’tharris’;I just discovered the open-source SVG editor, Inkscape.
And it’s not a moment too soon. I’ve been using Illustrator to edit some extremely complicated SVG graphs. Except that when ever I “save-as” from Illustrator, it can no longer open the resulting file! I’m still using Illustrator 10 which undoubtedly is part of the [...]

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Visualizing intellectual lineages

May 4, 2006

url=’http://thewildtype.com/2006/05/04/visualizing-intellectual-lineages/’;username=’tharris’;

Several years ago, WormBase began collecting detailed intellectual pedigrees for members of the community. To display the large degree of collaboration within the community, I created a directed acyclic graph for the 2005 C. elegans meeting that displays the following relationships:

PI <-> Post doc
PI <-> Grad student
PI <-> Masters
PI <-> Undergraduate
Worked with
Collaborated with

About the [...]

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