Infographics: Can they make reading journals easier?

As we struggle with information overload and clinical overload, it is harder to keep up with updates in medical literature.  Several journals are trying to make it easier to scan articles and get the salient points quickly e.g. Annals of Internal Medicine provides a commentary summarizing the practical implications of a study.
My assumption is that most readers scan the abstracts of articles before deciding which ones to read in full.  Appropriate use of graphics can improve comprehension and possibly make this scanning process more efficient.  As the old saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words".  Clearly graphics are very popular as can be seen by the popularity of Infographics and Pinterest.
So I decided to try out a free infographic creation tool Piktochart to create a visual representation of the salient points of a study.

I chose this study from JAMA - because it was the first study that caught my eye in my Google Reader stream after I thought of this idea.  So this is what the abstract looks like:

As you can imagine it took me a few minutes to get the main message of the study.  What if I had seen this infographic instead?  I took all the information from the study abstract.  The only thing I added was the Number Needed to Treat (NNT) that I calculated myself.  

Infographic Created by Neil Mehta

So what do you think?  Does an Infographic make it easier to scan journal articles?  If so, should journals have data visualization experts on their editorial team to help create these?  Should there be standards for creating these e.g. Blue circles for control groups and yellow for intervention groups, etc?

The Search Hub - search the Web, Email, Cloud storage and Bookmarks from one place!

We know how Google transformed how we find information.  It is the default search engine for majority of users.  But many users may not be aware of 2 features that help me tremendously.

1. Google is now doing a field trial that lets you search your Gmail and Google Drive for the search terms
2. When you search using Google it can simultaneously search your Diigo Bookmarks.  

So now you can from one hub search the web, your email, your cloud storage and your bookmarks!  

Google Search Field Trial - search Gmail and Google Drive from Google Search!

Search your Diigo Bookmarks from Google Search.

Bring your own device (BYOD) and the Ecosystem

Recently I was talking with a very bright colleague who is about to cave in and buy a tablet.  He does not even own a smartphone. He has managed to stay out of this technology maelstrom for so long that he was asking folks for advice about which was the ideal one to buy.  I was impressed that he did not just jump in to buy the iPad since that is what everyone had heard of.

I told him there were many factors to consider like the carrier, the size of the device, whether it has a microSD card etc but one of the factors was the ecosystem.  Seeing the look on his face, I knew I had some explaining to do.  So what is an ecosystem?

In biology, an ecosystem describes the complex interactions between the living organisms and their environment.  In technology, it describes the hardware and software on the device and the content and the applications that they interact with that often reside in the cloud.  [This is my made up definition and would be glad to know of a more formal generally accepted one].

He still looked puzzled so I drew a few circles representing Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon on the back of a paper napkin.  Then I drew some boxes on the circumference representing the following:

An Example of an Ecosystem

• App Store
• Music
• Games
• Movies
• eBooks
• Apps
• Devices
• SmartPhones
• Tablets
• Desktops/laptops with OS
• Cloud storage
• Documents/Office apps e.g. documents, presentations and spreadsheets
• Social Networking
• Email
• Calendaring
• Contacts
• VOIP and Video conferencing
• Content Management Systems
• Groups
• Maps
• Browsers with syncing across devices
• RSS feedreaders
• Search

At this point his eyes were getting a bit glazed over.  He appeared to be asking, "What has all this got to do with buying a tablet or smartphone?"  So I gave him an example of how these are all integrated and having a device that is part of the ecosystem makes a lot of tasks easier.  Thus if you like using Google Voice, you may want to lean towards getting an Android device as it is seamlessly integrated into the phone.  

While it is often possible to access parts of an ecosystem from another type of device, it may not always be smooth.  Thus one can access Google Drive from both an Android and an iOS tablet (iPad) but generally the Android tablet gets features before the iPad.  The recent Google Maps issue on iPhone 5 is another example.  

He got it.  He was actually pretty amazed at how much these devices could do.  I felt bad about leaving him without any direction.  I was trying not to bias him but then he asked me what I would do if I was him.  I told him I would probably get the Nexus 7 tablet.  It was recently named the top gadget and top tablet of 2012.  He asked me, "Does that preclude me from getting an iPhone later?  Isn't the iPhone the best phone out there? And what about a computer OS? Google does not have one does it?"

"Great questions!" I said, "You may want to take a look at the this video before you consider buying an iPhone 5"

"And as far as the OS goes, Google does have computers with the Chrome OS but you can get the entire Google Ecosystem from a Chrome browser which you can install on a computer with any OS."  At this point, he was almost convinced.  But then I had to break the bad news to him.  "Of course, you need to know that our workplace does not support Android; only the Blackberry is supported.  Also only devices bought through work will be able to access the enterprise e-mail.  This is for security reasons."

I really don't like to see grown men cry!  Wish the BYOD philosophy was easier to embrace for organizations.