Sunday, November 20, 2011

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Learning From Beethoven: Speeding Up The Exchange Of Scientific Knowledge

from the it's-good-to-share dept

There is a general belief that science proceeds by smooth cycles of discovery and sharing � that scientists formulate theories, investigate problems, produce data and then publish results for other scientists to check, reproduce and then build on.



That may be the theory, but in practice the frictionless sharing of scientific results is greatly impeded by two factors: the huge profits that scientific publishers make from acting as a tollgate for knowledge through their journals, and the Bayh-Dole Act that encourages educational establishments to try to make money by not freely sharing the discoveries of their academics, but patenting them instead.



Open access arose in part to combat the first of these, and now there's a new project that wants to build on its achievements by updating scientific knowledge more rapidly:


We want to change the way research is communicated, both amongst researchers, as well as with health practitioners, patients and the wider public. Inspired by Beethoven, we want to build a research version of his repository and try to tackle the question "What if the public scientific record would be updated directly as research proceeds?"

"Inspired by Beethoven" refers to this quotation from one of his letters, written in 1801:

There should be only one repository of art in the world, where an artist would only need to bring his creations in order to take what he needed.

Here's how this new project hopes to start creating a repository for science:

There are already over 100,000 scholarly articles available online under a Creative Commons Attribution License and thus free for anyone to read, download, copy, distribute, modify and build upon, provided that proper attribution is given. We will start building Beethoven's open repository by taking 10,000 of these (especially review articles), convert them into a common format, interlink them like topics are linked on Wikipedia, and update them with fresh information as new research findings become available. This will turn the original 10,000 articles into Evolving Review Articles - in other contexts called Living Reviews - available under that same Creative Commons license. We expect that this will help research to be communicated faster, with the ability to promptly correct errors or misconceptions, and in a way that better incorporates the interests of the public. The Evolving Reviews will have a public version history, so that anyone can see in what state the article was at any given time in the past. Over time, this feature can develop into an important tool for exploring the history of science, or of ideas more generally.

Obviously this idea is close to that of wiki-based projects like Wikipedia, and that's no bad thing, since the format has proved its power in multiple contexts. Interestingly, the people behind what they seem to be calling "Beethoven's open repository of research" want to write some new software for the job:
we think that Beethoven's open repository of research should be federated rather than centralized. This means that if you edit a page in the repository, this act will create a personal copy for you. You can decide whether you want to feed these changes back to others, they can decide whether they accept your changes, and there must be options for authorizing certain versions for certain purposes. Such federated systems for the collaborative structuring of knowledge are only just emerging, and producing a working prototype platform that allows anyone to contribute to Beethoven's open repository is an important milestone in our project. Once the platform is up and running, the 10,000 seed articles will have to be imported, and a selection of them will be used to demo the Evolving Review concept. You can help shape the project by making suggestions as to what topics we should concentrate on. Finally, we want to facilitate the reuse of the Evolving Reviews in contexts outside research, especially in education and in supporting patients.

They've launched an appeal for funds using RocketHub, a platform similar to Kickstarter, and are seeking a fairly modest $12,000. But you have to wonder whether that's really enough for what sounds an interesting but ambitious project.



Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+



18 Comments | Leave a Comment..



Former Activision and Call of Duty veterans have started a new video game studio called U4iA Games. Their aim is to bring hardcore games to social game platforms, from the web to Facebook and mobile.


The Bellevue, Wash.-based studio is making an online-only hardcore free-to-play game that it calls a “first-person social game.” The company founders are Dusty Welch (pictured right), chief executive officer, and Chris Archer (pictured left), chief creative officer. In their careers, they have worked on games such as Call of Duty, Doom, Guitar Hero, Spider-Man, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.


U4iA (pronounced “euphoria”) believes that there is a new segment of players emerging: the hardcore social gamer. Facebook game creators Kixeye and Kabam have already discovered this. But Welch said in an interview that his company aims to shoot even higher on the quality bar, creating AAA-quality games along the lines of what Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, has done for web-based combat games. China’s Tencent acquired Riot Games earlier this year for nearly $400 million. League of Legends is a fast-action combat game that uses the free-to-play model, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods.


Welch believes that hardcore gamers are wholeheartedly embracing that model and are more likely than other players to actually purchase something in a game. That model enabled Kabam to raise more than $130 million and hire more than 400 people. Welch believes that, like casual gamers, hardcore players are moving to new platforms such as social networks and mobile devices.


Given the huge numbers being bandied about, it’s no surprise that U4iA has raised money. The company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding and has 14 employees. Archer believes that people using social networks and mobile devices deserve great games just like anybody else and says those games haven’t been made yet.


“Many studios are making casual games for a core audience,” Archer said. “We’re making core games for a social audience.” Welch added, “We think the hardcore gamers are going to start looking for the core games on the social and mobile networks now.”


U4iA got its start earlier this year after Sony Online Entertainment shut down several studios, including the Seattle studio that Archer was running (they were making an online game called The Agency). Archer and Welch got together and started their new company.


Archer and Welch have created, designed, produced or marketed more than 50 video games that have generated more than $4 billion in revenue. Welch was a co-founder of the Call of Duty franchise. Years ago, he saw the movie Saving Private Ryan and felt like the game Medal of Honor, published by Electronic Arts, failed to capture the excitement of the film. So he conceived of Call of Duty and contracted Infinity Ward to create the first title, aiming “to kick the snot out of EA.”


After that, the series took off and is now the best-selling video game franchise of all time. While at Activision for 13 years, Welch also worked with id Software, the Soldier of Fortune title, and the Guitar Hero group.


Archer is a 20-year game development veteran and has produced more than 40 games across a wide variety of platforms. He helped create titles such as True Crime: Streets of LA, the Spider-Man movie games, the X-Men Legends games, 11th Hour, and Powerslave.


The company’s first game is in the works and will be announced later. Besides Kabam and Kixeye, rivals include Valve, Nexon, and Neowiz. U4iA is using the Unity 3D engine to create its games for the web, mobile devices, and social networks. Investors include ABR Capital and several executives from top game publishers.


“We think we’re at the spearhead of a lot of cool things,” Welch said.



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2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville Day 1a: Jarvis Bags Bunches <b>...</b>

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Animating New York City&#39;s <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

A Hong Kong-based company, Next Media, that has turned major news events into popular animated videos has now set up an office in New York City.

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Animating New York City&#39;s <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

A Hong Kong-based company, Next Media, that has turned major news events into popular animated videos has now set up an office in New York City.

Animating New York City&#39;s <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Transfer <b>news</b>, rumours and gossip from Saturday&#39;s papers: Milan <b>...</b>

Milan rivals to battle for Tevez, Porto defender hints at Chelsea switch and Aquilani eyes permanent Serie A switch.

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Learning From Beethoven: Speeding Up The Exchange Of Scientific Knowledge

from the it's-good-to-share dept

There is a general belief that science proceeds by smooth cycles of discovery and sharing � that scientists formulate theories, investigate problems, produce data and then publish results for other scientists to check, reproduce and then build on.



That may be the theory, but in practice the frictionless sharing of scientific results is greatly impeded by two factors: the huge profits that scientific publishers make from acting as a tollgate for knowledge through their journals, and the Bayh-Dole Act that encourages educational establishments to try to make money by not freely sharing the discoveries of their academics, but patenting them instead.



Open access arose in part to combat the first of these, and now there's a new project that wants to build on its achievements by updating scientific knowledge more rapidly:


We want to change the way research is communicated, both amongst researchers, as well as with health practitioners, patients and the wider public. Inspired by Beethoven, we want to build a research version of his repository and try to tackle the question "What if the public scientific record would be updated directly as research proceeds?"

"Inspired by Beethoven" refers to this quotation from one of his letters, written in 1801:

There should be only one repository of art in the world, where an artist would only need to bring his creations in order to take what he needed.

Here's how this new project hopes to start creating a repository for science:

There are already over 100,000 scholarly articles available online under a Creative Commons Attribution License and thus free for anyone to read, download, copy, distribute, modify and build upon, provided that proper attribution is given. We will start building Beethoven's open repository by taking 10,000 of these (especially review articles), convert them into a common format, interlink them like topics are linked on Wikipedia, and update them with fresh information as new research findings become available. This will turn the original 10,000 articles into Evolving Review Articles - in other contexts called Living Reviews - available under that same Creative Commons license. We expect that this will help research to be communicated faster, with the ability to promptly correct errors or misconceptions, and in a way that better incorporates the interests of the public. The Evolving Reviews will have a public version history, so that anyone can see in what state the article was at any given time in the past. Over time, this feature can develop into an important tool for exploring the history of science, or of ideas more generally.

Obviously this idea is close to that of wiki-based projects like Wikipedia, and that's no bad thing, since the format has proved its power in multiple contexts. Interestingly, the people behind what they seem to be calling "Beethoven's open repository of research" want to write some new software for the job:
we think that Beethoven's open repository of research should be federated rather than centralized. This means that if you edit a page in the repository, this act will create a personal copy for you. You can decide whether you want to feed these changes back to others, they can decide whether they accept your changes, and there must be options for authorizing certain versions for certain purposes. Such federated systems for the collaborative structuring of knowledge are only just emerging, and producing a working prototype platform that allows anyone to contribute to Beethoven's open repository is an important milestone in our project. Once the platform is up and running, the 10,000 seed articles will have to be imported, and a selection of them will be used to demo the Evolving Review concept. You can help shape the project by making suggestions as to what topics we should concentrate on. Finally, we want to facilitate the reuse of the Evolving Reviews in contexts outside research, especially in education and in supporting patients.

They've launched an appeal for funds using RocketHub, a platform similar to Kickstarter, and are seeking a fairly modest $12,000. But you have to wonder whether that's really enough for what sounds an interesting but ambitious project.



Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+



18 Comments | Leave a Comment..



Former Activision and Call of Duty veterans have started a new video game studio called U4iA Games. Their aim is to bring hardcore games to social game platforms, from the web to Facebook and mobile.


The Bellevue, Wash.-based studio is making an online-only hardcore free-to-play game that it calls a “first-person social game.” The company founders are Dusty Welch (pictured right), chief executive officer, and Chris Archer (pictured left), chief creative officer. In their careers, they have worked on games such as Call of Duty, Doom, Guitar Hero, Spider-Man, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.


U4iA (pronounced “euphoria”) believes that there is a new segment of players emerging: the hardcore social gamer. Facebook game creators Kixeye and Kabam have already discovered this. But Welch said in an interview that his company aims to shoot even higher on the quality bar, creating AAA-quality games along the lines of what Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, has done for web-based combat games. China’s Tencent acquired Riot Games earlier this year for nearly $400 million. League of Legends is a fast-action combat game that uses the free-to-play model, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods.


Welch believes that hardcore gamers are wholeheartedly embracing that model and are more likely than other players to actually purchase something in a game. That model enabled Kabam to raise more than $130 million and hire more than 400 people. Welch believes that, like casual gamers, hardcore players are moving to new platforms such as social networks and mobile devices.


Given the huge numbers being bandied about, it’s no surprise that U4iA has raised money. The company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding and has 14 employees. Archer believes that people using social networks and mobile devices deserve great games just like anybody else and says those games haven’t been made yet.


“Many studios are making casual games for a core audience,” Archer said. “We’re making core games for a social audience.” Welch added, “We think the hardcore gamers are going to start looking for the core games on the social and mobile networks now.”


U4iA got its start earlier this year after Sony Online Entertainment shut down several studios, including the Seattle studio that Archer was running (they were making an online game called The Agency). Archer and Welch got together and started their new company.


Archer and Welch have created, designed, produced or marketed more than 50 video games that have generated more than $4 billion in revenue. Welch was a co-founder of the Call of Duty franchise. Years ago, he saw the movie Saving Private Ryan and felt like the game Medal of Honor, published by Electronic Arts, failed to capture the excitement of the film. So he conceived of Call of Duty and contracted Infinity Ward to create the first title, aiming “to kick the snot out of EA.”


After that, the series took off and is now the best-selling video game franchise of all time. While at Activision for 13 years, Welch also worked with id Software, the Soldier of Fortune title, and the Guitar Hero group.


Archer is a 20-year game development veteran and has produced more than 40 games across a wide variety of platforms. He helped create titles such as True Crime: Streets of LA, the Spider-Man movie games, the X-Men Legends games, 11th Hour, and Powerslave.


The company’s first game is in the works and will be announced later. Besides Kabam and Kixeye, rivals include Valve, Nexon, and Neowiz. U4iA is using the Unity 3D engine to create its games for the web, mobile devices, and social networks. Investors include ABR Capital and several executives from top game publishers.


“We think we’re at the spearhead of a lot of cool things,” Welch said.



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2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville Day 1a: Jarvis Bags Bunches <b>...</b>

The 2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville kicked off on Friday and attracted 188 players for Day 1a. Matthew Jarvis looks to be the early chip leader.

2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville Day 1a: Jarvis Bags Bunches <b>...</b>

Animating New York City&#39;s <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

A Hong Kong-based company, Next Media, that has turned major news events into popular animated videos has now set up an office in New York City.

Animating New York City&#39;s <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Transfer <b>news</b>, rumours and gossip from Saturday&#39;s papers: Milan <b>...</b>

Milan rivals to battle for Tevez, Porto defender hints at Chelsea switch and Aquilani eyes permanent Serie A switch.

Transfer <b>news</b>, rumours and gossip from Saturday&#39;s papers: Milan <b>...</b>




















































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