But David Pogue says there’s no “one-click Pogue subscription” and that to catch all his content online, one has to subscribe to multiple sources in multiple formats.

I think that stinks. I think there should be a one-click way to keep up with Pogue. After all, he’s one of my favorite writers on technology.

So…let’s see if we CAN make a one-click Pogue Subscription.

We already have an RSS feed for Pogue’s Posts (his NYT blog):
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/

To get his columns, Pogue suggests an email subscription (bleah!).

Here’s the feed for his NYT columns:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_pogue/index.html?rss=1

Pogue only has one solution to get his videos syndicated, and one to get them sans syndication:

* VIDEOS: Subscribe through iTunes . This is better than finding them on the Web, because (a) you’ll never miss one, (b) no ads, (c) higher quality, (d) iPhone/iPod compatibility, and (e) they’re downloaded files, so you can play them at will.

[UPDATE: If you're not into iTunes, you can also get the videos on nytimes.com, from my video channel here. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to subscribe to it automatically.]

We can do better than that.

Want to subscribe to Pogue videos without having to use iTunes?

Subscribe to one of these feeds in your favorite aggregator:
http://nytsynvideo.com/itunes/5 (.mp4, no advertisements)
OR
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/technology/david-pogue/1194811622273/index.html?rss=1 (Links to each new Flash video on the NYT Web site, has advertisements)

Pogue gives his Twitter user ID, but that isn’t suitable for a one-click “Pogue Direct” solution, so we’ll grab the RSS feed for his Twitter stream:
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/9534522.rss

So, let’s use Yahoo! Pipes to slap ‘em all together. While in Pipes, we’ll even add a word to the front of each title so you know which feed the item is coming from.

Want a single RSS feed? Here you go:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DavidPogueDirect

Prefer to get that via email? (I don’t recommend it. Who wants an email every time David Pogue Tweets?)

Preview of David Pogue Direct:

I did this for fun and to see if I could. If Mr. Pogue objects, I will of course disable all of this. I’m a fan, after all.

Still, wouldn’t it be smart of the NYT to offer a convenient, one-click channel for David Pogue’s content? Slapping this together took me 20 minutes. Imagine how cool it could be if the NYT did it.

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Recently, he bought a digital picture frame from Woot that can be fed photos via RSS- as a gift to my parents.

The clever bit is where each of my siblings created a Flickr or Photobucket account in which to post photos of grandchildren. The feeds from each of these accounts was combined in Yahoo Pipes so that, once the frame is set up on my folks’ WiFi network, any new photos posted appear in their digital photo frame.

What a great way for a geographically dispersed family to keep grandparents updated.

My mom called to tell me how much she liked it, and I made a point of noting it was Andrew’s clever idea. All I did was mash the feed together in Yahoo Pipes.

I love technology when it is used intelligently.

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“I’ve been setting up local RSS pages with Feedburner [for email distribution] and Feed2JS [for dislaying the content of feeds on Web pages] for our most popular journals, to allow for TOCs.

…

It seems the publishers have gotten wise to this and are not allowing their feeds to be resyndicated. It started with EbscoHost — I noticed their feeds never seemed to refresh themselves (which totally defeats the purpose of having a feed). Now it seems ScienceDirect is also blocking re-syndication. FeedBurner can’t pick up the feeds; Feed2JS gives an error, yet the feed validator says it’s a valid feed. SD is providing it’s own source-code to paste into local web pages, but it takes so long to load the page that it invariably times out = useless.

Just wondering if you’ve heard of this from anyone else…”

I don’t use either one of these, so I haven’t seen this problem. Has anyone else? Please let us know in the comments?

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http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/

I didn’t know the CDC was on MySpace or that the FDA had a recall Twitter feed.

I decided I should definitely follow the CDC’s Twitter feed for Health Professionals, which is for “…Health Professionals interested in staying up-to-date with CDC’s interactive media activities…”

They’ve also got a widget to help consumers search for products impacted by the Peanut-Containing Product Recall (embedded below).

Includes:

• Blogs
• eMail Subscriptions
• Health-e-Cards
• Mobile Information
• Online Video
• Phone/Email
• Podcasts
• RSS Feeds
• Social Networks
• Badges for Social Networks
• Twitter
• Virtual Worlds
• Web Sites
• Widgets

Go check it out.

Hat tip: Maura Sostack

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Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug information in Wikipedia.
Ann Pharmacother. 2008 Dec;42(12):1814-21. Epub 2008 Nov 18.
[PubMed] | [html] | [PDF]

The article compares drug information in Wikipedia to drug information in the Medscape drug reference.

“This study suggests that Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers looking for drug information, but that it should be supplementary to, rather than the sole source of, drug information. This is due, in part, to our findings that Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission versus the comparator database.”

And I loved this:

“…health professionals should not use user-edited sites as authoritative sources in their clinical practice, nor should they recommend them to patients without knowing the limitations and providing sufficient additional information and counsel. If these sites are recommended, it should be in the form of a permanent link pointing to the specific recommended version of an entry. Finally, the issues raised in Web 2.0 are not novel, nor are the approaches; consumer education, watchful editors, alert health professionals, and ethical online behavior remain, as ever, the foundation for the safety of Internet health information.”

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Internet Cool Tools for Physicians is in Google Book Search

Stephen Francoeur made this little video:

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the MLA mentioned it on their blog.

The MLA’s Taskforce on Social Networking Software posted about it, calling it “…an accessible, illustrated and contemporary guide to online tools in medicine.”

Laika, whose blog has quickly become one of my favorite MedLib blogs, mentioned it, as did Creaky.

I’m watching WorldCat.org with interest to see which libraries are getting it (though Duke’s copy doesn’t show up yet).

Dr. Shock (MD, PhD) gave it a very nice review.

I’m lucky to count as friends people like Meredith Farkas and Michael Stephens, both of whom thought the book worthy of mention on their very popular blogs.

Gosh- Brandi blogged about it way back in August- well before it as released!

I’m pleased to see mention of it in languages other than English.

The President and CEO of Community General Hospital blogged about it.

It has gotten some buzz on Twitter.

We’re anxious to hear any feedback you have about the book- please let us know what you think….and what you think needs to be added or changed for the second edition!

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Other helpful videos about Google Reader

Google Reader “Getting Started Guide”

[via]

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Yay!

You can buy a copy from:
Springer Publishing

or here:

I’m looking forward to eventually seeing it in WorldCat.

Congratulations to Melissa Rethlefsen (who wrote a heck of a lot more than I did)! You should really go email Melissa now and tell her how much she rocks.

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Also: I’ll be on a panel at NYLA tomorrow (Friday, 11/6/2008) afternoon at 4:00 PM- please say hello if you’re going to be there! As usual at these sorts of things, I’ll know almost nobody. But hey- I might get to meet Polly Farrington!

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From the Ebling Library at the University of Wisconsin Madison:

Also available as PDF.

I also really enjoyed this poster from Ebling¹:

(Fair Warning: PDF is about 7 MBs)

Lots more on this project from Ebling here

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