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.

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.

---
Related Articles at Startup Meme:

1. Scenario: Selecting/de-selecting the text object and trying to move it on the canvas using keyboard arrow keys.
   Problem description: The text within a textbox in Fireworks CS4 on a Mac will move within the textbox and even move out of the textbox if you select and deselect the textbox multiple times while moving the textbox with the keyboard arrow keys each time.
   Temporary workaround: When ever you see a text image going out of sync with its bounding box, just re-adjust the text or double click inside the bounding box. This will make the text object to correct itself.
The above scenario can be seen visually from the video. The video has been provided by www.designme.sk
View Video
2. Scenario: Trying to align text elements using mouse either against other objects present on the canvas or a guide, using the cues from smart guides.
   
   Problem description: When ever we have grids enabled and we try to align a text element against other objects on the canvas using the cue from smart guides, sometimes the text bounding box shifts away from the text image on releasing the mouse.
   
   It seems this shift in the bounding box is happening when the bounding box tends to snap to the nearest grid pixel and we release the mouse at half pixel less.
   
   Temporary workaround: Try to align text elements with the following settings turned off. (i)View->Grid->Snap to Grid and (ii)View->Smart Guides->Snap to Smart Guides


3. Scenario: Range Kerning/Kerning value in CS3 is not the same in CS4.
   
   Problem description: Range Kerning value applied in CS3 does not give the same appearance when opened in CS4 and updated. The look of the text block totally changes and we need to manually enter the new value to get back the desired effect.
   
   Temporary workaround: Range Kerning control present in the UI has now been changed to Tracking in FWCS4. Tracking control works the same way as that present in apps such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. To apply tracking, a range of characters has to be selected first, unlike kerning control wherein, just keeping the cursor between 2 characters we could apply kerning.
   
   For a value of Kerning applied in CS3, if we set approximately 10 times the value of Tracking in CS4, we can get similar looking text element. Ex: if the Kerning value which was set in CS3 for a text element was 10, then around 100 could be the Tracking value which we will have to set in CS4 so that we can get similar looking result.
4. Scenario: 2 pixel shift in text glyphs when we change area/frame text to point text and vice a versa.
   
   Problem description: When we change the area text (drawn by click dragging on the canvas using the text tool such that we get an area bounding box) into a point text (drawn by just click once on the canvas using text tool) by double clicking the top right handle or vice-versa, we can see that there is a 2-px shift in glyphs on the canvas.
   
   In ATE, bounding box of a point text is different than the area text. The area text has a small gap between the glyphs and the bounding box, thus currently when we do such a change; there is a slight shift of the glyphs either upwards or downwards depending upon the point or area text change done.
   
   Temporary workaround: Create either an area text or point text depending upon your requirement and don’t shift or change from one type to the other. Note that when you convert area text to point text, the glyphs shift 2 px downwards and when we convert a point text into an area text, glyphs shift 2 px upwards.
   
   


5. Scenario: Trying to 9-slice scale a custom symbol or common library element, sometimes the text jumps away.
   
   Problem description: When we try to apply 9slice scaling on common library element such as a button etc, sometimes the text jumps away from its location. 9-slice scaling when applied to a text bounding box changes it to an area text if it’s a point text which makes the glyphs to shift 2 px from their original location. Moreover in situations where in 9-slice scaling is used to scale the button element, after some point the text tends to break away from its original location.
   
   Temporary workaround: If a symbol or custom component has text contained inside, then make sure that the text object is placed well inside the 9-slice guides and they are not overlapping. More importantly, make sure that the text element is an area text box (if it’s not then convert it by dragging the lower right corner of the bounding box) and not a point text box.

1. Scenario: Selecting/de-selecting the text object and trying to move it on the canvas using keyboard arrow keys.
   Problem description: The text within a textbox in Fireworks CS4 on a Mac will move within the textbox and even move out of the textbox if you select and deselect the textbox multiple times while moving the textbox with the keyboard arrow keys each time.
   Temporary workaround: When ever you see a text image going out of sync with its bounding box, just re-adjust the text or double click inside the bounding box. This will make the text object to correct itself.
The above scenario can be seen visually from the video. The video has been provided by www.designme.sk
View Video
2. Scenario: Trying to align text elements using mouse either against other objects present on the canvas or a guide, using the cues from smart guides.
   
   Problem description: When ever we have grids enabled and we try to align a text element against other objects on the canvas using the cue from smart guides, sometimes the text bounding box shifts away from the text image on releasing the mouse.
   
   It seems this shift in the bounding box is happening when the bounding box tends to snap to the nearest grid pixel and we release the mouse at half pixel less.
   
   Temporary workaround: Try to align text elements with the following settings turned off. (i)View->Grid->Snap to Grid and (ii)View->Smart Guides->Snap to Smart Guides


3. Scenario: Range Kerning/Kerning value in CS3 is not the same in CS4.
   
   Problem description: Range Kerning value applied in CS3 does not give the same appearance when opened in CS4 and updated. The look of the text block totally changes and we need to manually enter the new value to get back the desired effect.
   
   Temporary workaround: Range Kerning control present in the UI has now been changed to Tracking in FWCS4. Tracking control works the same way as that present in apps such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. To apply tracking, a range of characters has to be selected first, unlike kerning control wherein, just keeping the cursor between 2 characters we could apply kerning.
   
   For a value of Kerning applied in CS3, if we set approximately 10 times the value of Tracking in CS4, we can get similar looking text element. Ex: if the Kerning value which was set in CS3 for a text element was 10, then around 100 could be the Tracking value which we will have to set in CS4 so that we can get similar looking result.
4. Scenario: 2 pixel shift in text glyphs when we change area/frame text to point text and vice a versa.
   
   Problem description: When we change the area text (drawn by click dragging on the canvas using the text tool such that we get an area bounding box) into a point text (drawn by just click once on the canvas using text tool) by double clicking the top right handle or vice-versa, we can see that there is a 2-px shift in glyphs on the canvas.
   
   In ATE, bounding box of a point text is different than the area text. The area text has a small gap between the glyphs and the bounding box, thus currently when we do such a change; there is a slight shift of the glyphs either upwards or downwards depending upon the point or area text change done.
   
   Temporary workaround: Create either an area text or point text depending upon your requirement and don’t shift or change from one type to the other. Note that when you convert area text to point text, the glyphs shift 2 px downwards and when we convert a point text into an area text, glyphs shift 2 px upwards.
   
   


5. Scenario: Trying to 9-slice scale a custom symbol or common library element, sometimes the text jumps away.
   
   Problem description: When we try to apply 9slice scaling on common library element such as a button etc, sometimes the text jumps away from its location. 9-slice scaling when applied to a text bounding box changes it to an area text if it’s a point text which makes the glyphs to shift 2 px from their original location. Moreover in situations where in 9-slice scaling is used to scale the button element, after some point the text tends to break away from its original location.
   
   Temporary workaround: If a symbol or custom component has text contained inside, then make sure that the text object is placed well inside the 9-slice guides and they are not overlapping. More importantly, make sure that the text element is an area text box (if it’s not then convert it by dragging the lower right corner of the bounding box) and not a point text box.

This is a lot of money and a good (if not great) valuation. The company is smart to raise this much now, given the collapse of the global economy. The New York Times could use a similar infusion.

Kara's quote from Oak's Fred Harman:

"There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be,' said Harman, in an interview with BoomTown. 'And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.'

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 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 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.

See Also:
Huffington Post Hasn't Yet Raised $15 Million*

TUAWFound Footage: A working NeXT Cube originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The most common use of csv files is data export and import. Many applications provide an export to csv option which will store the selected data in a csv file which can then be imported into another application that supports csv import.

Problems can arise if the generated csv file becomes very large as some applications or computer systems might run into limits. That’s where CSV Splitter (via Technospot) would come into play. The portable application can split large csv files into multiple files limiting the newly created csv files by the number of lines.

The new csv files will be created in a subdirectory in the same location. It will be named after the original csv file. The application requires the Microsoft .net Framework 1.1.

Split CSV Files

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Because that’s what UK-based Lancashire Tea is looking to strike interest in. The tea packager has tapped The Rehab Agency, a marketing consultancy, to produce three designs, which, along with the original graphic, has been put up for a vote on Facebook, according to Packaging News.

Voting goes until December 1, and interestingly enough, once the results are tallied, if a new design wins top honor, Rehab gets paid in full. If the original gets gold, however, Rehab will, according to managing director Janie Ash, receive a “much reduced fee.”

A Small Tea-Drinking Constituency

Of course, Lancashire’s Official Tea Club group isn’t buzzing with activity in light of this month-long event. It’s member page touts under 300 people, and just two dozen individuals have bothered to speak their peace about the Rehab project.

But the social networking endeavor is curious nonetheless. Especially when sized up amid other marketing efforts on the social Web.

Not the First Social Marketing Experiment…

You may remember that mega toothpaster Crest partly crowdsourced an ad run on YouTube this summer.

And how about Microsoft’s I’m a PC venture, in which the public was urged to record video confessionals and contribute their efforts to a collage of Windows-themed spots? That turned out to be quite the attention-getter.

Let’s not forget the ever-infamous Facebook Beacon experiment, either, in which users were involved in a social advertising experiment that quickly drew majority ire for its seeming underhandedness.

…Certainly Not the Last

What’s next on the social marketing menu, then? I call for a new design of watermelon. Oval is so over. Square is…square. I pitch another parallelogram. What say you?

Imagery provided by iStockPhoto/Bryngelzon; Crown Melon

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