Although much is said about the economic conditions in the US, it seems that UK might be even worst off as British media companies could cut tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years due to economic turmoil. According to a Reuters report half of all UK media jobs will become history by 2013:

Claire Enders, founder of independent consultancy group Enders Analysis, told Reuters she expected about half of all UK media jobs to go by 2013 under current economic conditions.

“We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000, that includes newspapers, radio, TV, production companies, advertising and so on, at the end of 2007.

“Between the beginning of 2008 and 2013 we’re expecting half of those jobs to go. The big employers are the regional press, magazines, local advertising sales. Real numbers are in print.”

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What information does PlayerSearch provide?
PlayerSearch provides you with the latest news, video, podcasts and blogs focused on individual players or teams (stats coming soon!). We search the full spectrum of on-line sports content from mainstream sources such as ESPN and CBS Sports to local newspapers, team websites, sports blogs, the best fantasy sports focused sites and much more. We also search the latest sports video from Truveo, Youtube and other sources such as NFL.com. If the information you are looking for isn’t provided directly on the search results page, it can most likely be found through one of the many links to other websites.

Is PlayerSearch a Search Engine?
Yes and no. The site is architected as a search engine because search engines are incredibly easy to use and provide you with the information you are looking for in the fewest clicks possible. No one ever needed an FAQ to figure out how to use Google Search! However, we do not crawl the web as Google does and we actually own a lot of the content included in the results through partnerships with key news and stats providers. While we use algorithms to search and index over a thousand sports focused feeds, we rely on human editors and our users to determine what those sports feeds are and how they should be categorized. Our strategy is to combine the benefits of algorithmic search, human sports editors and user submited content to provide the most targeted, comprehensive and fresh sports focused search results possible.

Source: PlayerSearch

Thanks to a tip from Eric Leebow.

Reading the come-on to prospective entrants provides some insight into the pressures biotech and pharma generally are facing these days to impress potential investors, analysts and the scientific community (from whence comes the brainpower it needs for survival’s sake):

“Take advantage of this opportunity to showcase your organization’s efforts and talents, and contribute to the industry’s broader knowledge base.

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE (No Fee): December 18, 2008
FINAL DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: January 21, 2009

Benefits of participation:

* Gain Peer Recognition: Spotlight the talent of your team, and position your organization as a thought leader, among an elite group of life science professionals.
* Heighten Visibility: Use creative positioning to add another layer of credibility in the industry. Entries, nominees and especially winners receive recognition at the Gala Dinner, in widely-distributed press releases, in the Best Practices issue of Bio-IT World magazine, as well as continued coverage on Bio-ITWorld.com and in the Best Practices Compendium of entries.
* Leverage Exposure: Showcase your expertise and unique solutions, and use the exposure as a conduit to valuable connections, investors, sales leads, job candidates, and other external audiences.

Well, it is working with me so far!! I get the magazine and there is always something interesting about how modern science is conducted and the results disseminated.

It was interesting to read what fields are covered in competition:

* Basic Research & Biological Research: Disease pathway research, applied and basic research
* Drug Discovery & Development: Compound-focused research, drug safety
* Clinical Trials & Research: Trial design, eCTD
* Translational Medicine: Feedback loops, predictive technologies
* Personalized Medicine: Responders/non-responders, biomarkers
* IT & Informatics: LIMS, High Performance Computing, storage, data visualization, imaging technologies
* Knowledge Management: Data mining, idea/expertise mining, text mining, collaboration, resource optimization
* Health-IT: ePrescribing, RHIOs, EMR/PHR
* Manufacturing & Bioprocessing: Mass production, continuous manufacturing

I decided to take a look at what was showcased in 2008 and perusing many of the articles linked to is a good way to see how big pharma and big government science are adapting to the world of Science 2.0.

Here is an interesting article for example: Connecting the Cancer Community caBIG Time

Now this is an ambitious undertaking that I had not heard about before. Here is some of what I read here:

caBIG™ stands for the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™. caBIG™ is an information network enabling all constituencies in the cancer community – researchers, physicians, and patients – to share data and knowledge. The components of caBIG™ are widely applicable beyond cancer as well.

The mission of caBIG™ is to develop a truly collaborative information network that accelerates the discovery of new approaches for the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

The goals of caBIG™ are to:

* Connect scientists and practitioners through a shareable and interoperable infrastructure
* Develop standard rules and a common language to more easily share information
* Build or adapt tools for collecting, analyzing, integrating, and disseminating information associated with cancer research and care.

Since its inception, caBIG™ has committed to the following cornerstones:

* Federated: caBIG™ software and resources are widely distributed, interlinked, and available to everyone in the cancer research community, but institutions maintain local control over their own resources and data.
* Open-development: caBIG™ tools and infrastructure are being developed through an open, participatory process. caBIG™ leverages existing resources whenever possible, rather than building new tools in every case.
* Open-access:caBIG™ resources are freely obtainable by the cancer community to ensure broad data-sharing and collaboration.
* Open-source: The caBIG™ source code is available to view, alter, and redistribute.

Whoa! That is a pretty sweeping mandate and game plan! This is one heck of a gargantuan undertaking, but when you read about the dynamo behind it and look at how far it has come in a few years you start to have real faith in big government science and realize that within massive research organizations there are some damn impressive people who want to take a machete to stultifying processes and stodgy mindsets that have unnecessarily impeded scientific progress for too long. One such intellectual powerhouse is profiled thus:

Kenneth H. Buetow, Ph.D., is the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Associate Director for Bioinformatics and Information Technology and the Director of the NCI Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB). As Director of the NCICB, Dr. Buetow oversees coordination and deployment of informatics in support of NCI research initiatives and the Center’s participation in the evaluation and prioritization of the NCI’s biomedical informatics research portfolio. Dr. Buetow initiated the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™ (caBIG™) pilot project and oversees its activities.

Go, Dr. Buetow, go! Keep the good work! The hope, apparently, is to create a model in the case of cancer that will engender like networks throughout medicine. A worthy, noble goal.

By contrast, to the culture of openness Dr. Buetow exemplifies here is a case of really bad marketing. As I write this column, I am clicking around some of the links in the original Bio-IT World article. I wanted to see to check out what sorts of conferences were advertised for those in the biomedical field. I was rather intrigued by the idea of writing here about the 4th Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress. But to get a brochure, you have to register — give me a break! How lame is that?

And then to compound the image of troglodyte thinking and the utter incapacity to grasp the revolution that is Web 2.0 that healthcare IT already has in the rest of the tech world, here is the wording on the press page.

“World Congress press credentials are available to full-time editorial staff writers employed by a trade publication, mainstream media outlet (newspaper, radio, TV, etc.), or online magazines. Freelance writers or contributing editors may request press credentials if the event is being covered for a specific publication.”

Grrrrrrrr. That pretty much excludes tech bloggers who produce some of the best coverage of IT around. If I were in charge of a major tech conference, I would not hire Patrick Golden to be my director of communications. But then I am just a little tech blogger and he has bigger fish to fry. But dissing the tech blogosphere is not the act of a smart person in the age of Web 2.0. No wonder the bright young minds of tech give healthcare a pass so very often–much to my continuing dismay, as someone who works in healthcare.

Voice Search plus the First Speech Recognition mashup to Facebook, Myspace, iTunes. Voice Tech Group, Inc. announces that in it’s first few months of availability more than 40,000 people have downloaded the free version of tazti (pronounced “tasty”) speech recognition.

tazti is the first Speech Recognition software to include robust voice search of more than 16 important web sites and search engines as well as speech recognition navigation of Facebook and  Myspace and voice control of the iTunes music player. In addition users can create their own speech commands, search their bookmarks by voice and search the iTunes music store by voice.

Voice Search: tazti enables a user to “talk to their PC” to perform searches, local searches and “spellsearches” of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK, AOL Video, Wikipedia, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and even Google Finance (for stock market data). tazti also allows users to voice search the USA government information website  usasearch.gov. Users can also search the iTunes music store by voice.

tazti mashup to Facebook and Myspace: tazti enables a user to log into and navigate Facebook and Myspace “by talking to their PC.” Speech commands include: “go Facebook profile”, “go Facebook friends”, go Facebook inbox”, “go Myspace home”, “go Myspace mail”, “go Myspace music forums”, “go Myspace favorites”  plus 27 other speech commands.

tazti mashup to iTunes: tazti enables a user to control the iTunes music player application when it is installed on their PC, via 35 speech commands.  Speech commands for iTunes includes changing tracks, searching  iTunes music store and controlling most music player capabilities, all by talking to your PC.

Create your own Speech Commands: tazti allows users to create their own speech commands and associate a web page, file or program to each new speech command. Your new speech commands can be anything from “Who’s the boss now?” to “Play Star Trek trailer”. Use your creativity. Many users create speech commands to play their favorite music tracks when they speak the name!

Available from http://www.tazti.com, tazti speech recognition software is a free download.

tazti Video Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1tt_aeIAM8

tazti AltSearch Video Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Po6PPdMtQ

tazti German Video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-7OUZCkZrE

Road warriors using a notebook PC, Mobile Internet Device or Ultra Mobile PC can use  the speech recognition  voice search - local search capability and other features in tazti wherever they can get connectivity. They can search for a coffee shop in a particular city or zipcode or for anything else on the internet, by voice.

tazti versions are available for Windows Vista and  XP, XP Pro, & XP Tablet operating systems. tazti can also be installed on  Intel based Macs running Parallels or other similar desktop environments.

An advanced multimedia player that includes an audio converter, recorder, and tag editor. Includes an easy to use interface, small size and minimal use of system resources.

Features:
- Crystal-clear sound, technology of reproduction essentially differs from Winamp and WMP;
- Sensitive equalizer;
- A maximum of functionality from a minimum of resources;
- The minimal consumption of system resources;
- Adjustment of global and local hot keys (patterns from WinAmp and WMP);
- Flexible options of the program and various covers will allow you to make A.I.M.P. completely individual;
- Support of plug-ins with which help it is possible to expand opportunities of the program;
- The audio converter codes music from the most different formats in wma, mp3, wav, ogg;
- AudioGrab allows to overtake AudioCD in Mp3, OGG, WAV or WM;
- The sound recording will allow you to write down a sound from any audio of the device in system;
- The built-in editor of tags, support WMA, MP3, OGG;

Huffington Post has raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners at a valuation of “south of $100 million,” according to a BoomTown source. Huffington Post is projecting itself as the Internet Newspaper and has apparently been able to live up to the hype by attracting huge readership, at a time when print based magazines and news papers are absolutely struggling. Press Release follows:

The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding From Oak Investment Partners

New York, NY (December 1, 2008)–The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion site, today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Huffington Post (”HuffPost”) will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company and for select and focused acquisitions. The company said it would invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings–including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post.

“This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for investigative journalism,” said Arianna Huffington. “We are particularly excited to have Fred Harman of Oak join our board; his deep knowledge of the new media landscape will help us to take HuffPost to the next level.”

Said Kenneth Lerer: “We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft [Partners] as we move forward. Since launching the site three and half years ago, the company has built a strong brand and an audience of millions who rely on the site for its mix of smart news and opinion. The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions.”

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, “Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to back Arianna, Betsy, and the company’s strong entrepreneurial team.”

Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post, said, “With funding from Oak, The Huffington Post is perfectly positioned to build on its incredible growth. Oak brings to the table a team with enormous experience and insight, and we look forward to working with them to seize the opportunities ahead of us.”

The Series C financing round comes as The Huffington Post continues to experience significant growth following the expansion of the site in 2007, when HuffPost began rolling out a variety of new sections, including entertainment, politics, media, living, style and green. The site also started its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. This year, The Huffington Post received widespread attention for its original reporting on the 2008 presidential race, including the coverage provided by its OffTheBus team of citizen journalists. HuffPost currently has 46 employees.

Harman joins The Huffington Post board of directors, whose members include: Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner of Softbank Capital, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Betsy Morgan.

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Like the name suggests it starts off by displaying everything - that is all files and folders - of a computer system. It eliminates all files and folders that do not match the search query of the user in the instant the key is pressed. What this means is that thousands of file names and folders will be displayed at the beginning, for example 1.5 million on a Windows XP test system.

Entering characters will reduce that amount drastically so that the required files and folders will be left in the end. To ensure that all files and folders have to be added to the index at start. It might take a minute or two depending on the amount of files. The developer mentions that indexing 1 million files will take around 1 minute. The index will be stored on the computer’s hard drive in the same location that the file was launched from. The one million indexed files and folders take up about 5 Megabytes of hard drive space.

The desktop search tool uses between 50 and 60 Megabytes of computer memory and about the same mount of virtual memory while running. The items can be sorted by name, path, data or size.

The search supports Boolean expressions, wildcards and regular expressions. The faq contains a helpful list of the expressions that can be used in the search.

Another interesting aspect of Everything is that it can launch an HTTP server so that users can search for and download files.

Everything will run on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista and can locate files and folders on local NTFS volumes.

Everything Is A Rather Unusual Desktop Search Tool

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