Using Blog Software to Create a "Regular" Website

Web blog software can be used for more than writing blogs. The current blog platforms are suitable for creating and maintaining a "regular" web site, i.e. a site which is not a blog (with entries arranged in a reversed chronological order). I have adapted the free Blogger.com by Google to create 4 such web sites:

• ClinicalCases.org
• PeriopMedicine.org
• AllergyCases.org.
• ClevelandClinic.org/Hospitalist
  

BloggingPro.com has a nice summary on using the WordPress server installation (not the free WordPress.com version) as a content management system (CMS) rivaling Drupal: Feature: 5 Reasons to Use WordPress as CMS.


This Google video shows it takes about 2 minutes to start a blog on Blogger.com. Creating a web site has never been easier.

References:
What I Learned from Making the Website of the Cleveland Clinic Hospitalists, 8/11/2006.
Using Web Services to Enhance a Medical Education Course, 2/20/2007.
Using a Blog to Build an Educational Portfolio, 1/15/2007.
Tips for New Bloggers: Sticky Posts in Blogger, 08/20/2007.

Updated: 08/20/2007

Elvis Presley's personal physician

According to Wikipedia:

George Nichopoulos, also known as "Dr. Nick," was Elvis Presley's personal physician. He began treating Elvis in 1967, and took it on as a full time job in 1970 until Elvis' death in 1977.

In 1977 alone, Dr. Nick had prescribed 10,000 doses of amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and laxatives for Presley. He says he did it because he 'cared'

Blood tests showed traces of 14 different drugs in Elvis's body at the time of his death.

In 1995 Nichopoulos had his license permanently suspended by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, after it was revealed that he had been over prescribing to numerous patients for years.

After he was stripped of his credentials in 1995, Dr Nick took a job evaluating medical insurance claims by FedEx employees, where he still works today, paying off his many legal bills.

References:
Doctor Feelgood. The Observer, Sunday, August 11, 2002.
Rock Idol Elvis Presley Dies at 42. Washington Post, Thursday, August 17, 1977.
Image source: Dr.Nick - ο έλληνας γιατρός του Ελβις.

Flickr Images...

Yeah, right.

Source: Xanboozled, a Creative Commons license.

Where are????

A few years ago the big question was where are the women bloggers. And honestly, we still ask that, especially in niche communities and the lack of women A-list bloggers.

I just finished listening to a great podcast by Motherhood Uncensored about blogging parents of color. The whole piece is about parents, mostly mothers, of color, where are they, who are they, and why the hell marketers aren't throwing freebies at our feet?

Thankfully I've been hooked into a few marketing networks and I feel like I'm getting enough freebies to review, at least as many as I can handle. But seriously, I'm not flooded with requests. Since Blogher I've found many a mommy blog that seem to be nothing but product reviews! Oh, my, goddess, but some bloggers are swimming in free shit.

But back to the real topic. When I do think about the other mommy bloggers I read, they are mostly not women of color. Does it matter? I'd say yes. Why? Because I see more and more that race is playing a part of our parenting decisions as our daughter gets older. I've thought and had others remark that we should be 'good' when applying to schools this fall since we get to check the "hispanic" box. Then again, the school we really want her to attend is pretty well full of Latin@s. Our last names give it away as well, so no use in not checking the box either!

I have more thoughts, but I think I'll work on them a bit more. Just wanted to let you all know about this podcast and my initial thoughts.

Technorati tags: mother, blogging, race, bloggers of color

Annals of Internal Medicine Launches Podcast and Audio Summaries

The Annals of Internal Medicine is the latest member of the "Big Five" of general medical journals to launch a podcast. The other four -- NEJM, JAMA, BJM and Lancet -- have been experimenting with portable audio for a while now. Click below to see the coverage of their podcasts on this blog over time:

1. NEJM, 11/2005.
Feed: http://podcast.nejm.org/nejm_audio_summaries.xml

2. Lancet, 4/2006.
Feed: http://podcast.thelancet.com/lancet.xml

3. JAMA, 4/2006.
Feed: http://jama.ama-assn.org/misc/jamapodcasts2006.rss

4. BMJ, 9/2006 (the podcast is not active now).

5. Annals, 7/2007.
Feed: http://media.acponline.org/feeds/annals.xml

Podcasts and text-to-speech programs to convert text to MP3 files can be beneficial to medical education. For example, the podcast/videocast coverage of the 2006 meeting of ACAAI is lively, comprehensive and summarizes most new developments if the field.

Most people subscribe to medical podcasts by using iTunes/iPod/iPhone from Apple. A lesser known fact is that Google Reader can be used as a podcast program as well.

Click here to subscribe to all 4 journal podcasts in your iGoogle homepage.

References:
Stop Going to Conferences for the Lectures. Listen to Podcasts Instead. Efficient MD, 06/2007.
Image source: Annals of Internal Medicine.

Updated: 08/18/2007

PubMed Suprise: A Researcher with 600 Co-Authors on a Single Article

It is somewhat striking to see a list of several PubMed articles with roughly 600 co-authors under each of them. ScienceRoll suspected that the first author (Aubert B.) must have a lot of friends and asked for an explanation. Here it is.

The last name in the author list is "BABAR Collaboration." A Google search shows that "BABAR is a High Energy Physics experiment located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, near Stanford University, in California. The goal of the experiment is to study the violation of charge and parity (CP) symmetry in the decays of B mesons." According to Wikipedia, a meson is a strongly interacting boson, that is, it is a hadron with integral spin. I hope this makes it clearer :)

The BABAR Collaboration consists of approximately 600 physicists and engineers from 75 institutions in 10 countries. This can probably explain the 600 co-authors.

Related reading:

BaBar experiment from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
500 authors of Grand Rounds 
The "BIG 1-98" randomised clinical trial really is big: 885 authors are listed on this Lancet article http://goo.gl/lKEfw via @JRBtrip

Working near a laser printer = Second hand smoking?

Digital Inspiration links to an Australian study which claims that some laser printers release large amounts of small particles in the air which can potentially have adverse long-term health effects:

"If your cubicle is located somewhere near the common office printer, either ask the support staff to move the printer elsewhere or you shift your desk to a different place in the office as in the current setup, the air around you may be highly polluted."

More research is needed before a final recommendation can be made, as usual, but the study results could be something to have in mind. Printing less, potentially saves trees and keeps the air clean. You can save electronic texts online in Yahoo MyWeb, GMail, Google Notebook or any other service you prefer.

References:
Laser Printers in Office Turn Employees into Passive Smokers. Digital Inspiration, 7/2007.
Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.