Phylo: A Crowdsourced, Beautiful Biodiversity Game

European Honey Bee card. Image credit: Phylogame.org
European Honey Bee card. Image credit: Phylogame.org

They started with one provocative thought: “Kids know more about Pokemon than they do about the plants and animals in their backyard. We’d like to do something about that.”

And then the team behind the Science Creative Quarterly released the idea to the web to see what would happen. It was 2010.

Now, just a few years later, the resulting fruit of a crowdsourced labor is Phylo: The Trading Card Game. Phylo is a frankly beautiful, “sneakily educational”, immediately compelling and truly cross-functional collaboration of the artistic, gaming, scientific, education and even intellectual property law communities all coming together to create and curate a sort of “biodiversity Pokemon.”

Okay, sounds neat, but why?

Continue reading “Phylo: A Crowdsourced, Beautiful Biodiversity Game”

Under the Weather? Twitter Knew Over a Week Ago

I’m not feeling very well today, which stinks because it’s Friday and I had some really fun plans tonight. Instead, I’ll probably end up staying home for a quiet night with my husband and daughter and some takeout food, and an early night to bed. I’m not complaining too much, though, because let’s be honest, you enjoy those quiet nights when you have a one-year-old toddler! But a recent article in New Scientist makes me wonder if, had I been paying close enough attention to Twitter, I could maybe have known over a week ago that I would’ve been under the weather today, and save me from having to tell all my girlfriends I’m probably pooping out on them tonight. Continue reading “Under the Weather? Twitter Knew Over a Week Ago”

Networking for Scientists Part III: Tips and Tricks for Online Social Networks

It’s 2012. Odds are you’re on a social networking site. And if you’re not, you need to be! At least for your job search. There are two kinds of social networkers: those who post every tiny detail that happens in their lives and those who do not. For the job search, you want to be somewhere in the middle. How you tailor your online profiles is very important. While you can keep the most stringent privacy settings, you never know who you know and you never know who will see what you post. An often overlooked fact about the internet that you should always remember is that everything you post is public! Always expect that potential employers WILL Google you.

That said, social networking can be a very powerful tool for the job search. Continue reading “Networking for Scientists Part III: Tips and Tricks for Online Social Networks”