PillBox added to NLM Toolbar ; to visually identify pills

"How can I identify a pill" is one of the FAQs at the NLM site. They already offer a nice list of resources, but they launched a new beta service called Pillbox. To visually identify tablets and capsules by imprint, shape, color, size and scoring. http://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov/index.html

Currently they offer two versions:

• a html-based screenreader compatible version and the
• visual identification/exploration Adobe Flex powered version.

 It is this visual version that I added to the NLM Toolbar. It opens in a floating box that can be placed anywhere on your screen.
Users that already use the Toolbar will spot the Pillbox between the Movies and Messages buttons.
People that are using another Toolbar can ADD just the Pillbox to their own Toolbar by clicking the box/logo below:

37 ways To Adjust Your NLM Toolbar (or any Conduit Toolbar)

Here are just a few ways you can ADJUST your NLM Toolbar once you have chosen to use it.
I am making this overview because the people creating this free toolbar software (Conduit) keep improvingand adding new ways of adjusting the toolbars to give users more possibilities.

1. During installation you can choose to add 3 personalised buttons to your toolbar (See the picture):
1. Email-notifier (to get notified of new email on multiple accounts)
   
2. Weather button (To see current and predicted Weather in specific location)
3. Radio-button (To select your own preferences in web-radio ánd to listen to added podcasts via RSS). The NLM Radioplayer contains the podcasts of the NLM Director Comments on MedlinePlus & the NIH Podcast.
   (These buttons can at all times be de-activated or actived later on)
   
2.  You can choose to set the customized websearch from the toolbar as your default search. It makes any search entered in the top-right searchbox (and from the address-bar) run through a Google-powered searchengine. This sounds good, but my advice is NOT to select this option. In my opinion the Google-powered Conduit search is the weakest spot from their toolbar-solution.
3. You could also set your homepage to this customized web search page, but again, this is not as strong as the normal Google search.
   
   
4. The NLM Toolbar is currently a set of 9 toolbars focussing on NLM services. You can at time toggle between the following toolbars. (NLM, PubMed, PubMedCentral, MedlinePlus, ClinicalTrials, DrugInfo, AidsInfo, DailyMed, HouseholdProducts) This group-function saves a lot of screen space. You just see one toolbar, but can have the power of 9. An edit-options to remove toolbars is available.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. If you find any other Conduit Toolbar on the web, an easy Add To Your Toolbars function will ask you if you want to enclose the new toolbar together with the NLM toolbars.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Extensive options to adjust the Toolbar can be found right next to the NLM-logo
   Very useful is the SHRINK TOOLBAR toggle option. It takes away all texts next to the buttons, using less space.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Toolbar Options:
   
   
   
   
   
   1. Personal Components
   1. Email-notifier
   2. Privacy Components
   3. Weather Forecast
   4. Online Radio Player
      
   2. Predefined Components : If you do not want to use some elements of the NLM Toolbar, you can simply de-select them.
      
   1. The Highlighter marker (highlight text and counts how often it appears on that webpage or document)
      
   2. News (16 selected NLM and related RSS-feeds with easy overview and access)
      
   3. ALL NLM (the NLM sitemap in a nutshell)
      
   4. For: (info for specific target groups)
      
   5. Journals & Books (quick access and overview)
      
   6. Messages (messages about the NLM toolbar with option to respond)
      
   7. About (general info on the NLM)
      
   8. QuickSearch (a searchbox to be added to your Netvibes, iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Opera, Vista or Windows Live)
      
   9. PillBox (new NLM feature to visually identy pills)
      
      
      
      
      
      
   3. Useful Components
   1.  Office Shortcuts Menu
   2. Windows Calculator
   3. Windows Media Player
   4. All Windows Office Tools
   5. Notepad
   6. MSN Messenger
   7. and more
      
      
   4. My Stuff
      
      
      
      To be abled to add `my own` stuff is one of the most heared request from our many toolbar users. And now Conduit offers this. They made it easy to create toolbar content (more on this, xml-menu's and html gadgets later on) ánd implemented a way to SHARE this through Conduit Open. These elements can be added and removed through the My Stuff-menu.
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
   5. Additional Settings (to select or de-select) : 
   
   1. Enable search Box History
   2. Suggest searches from Search History (and a clear options)
   3. Send user statistics (helps the company to improve the toolbar, but has privacy implications)
   4. Add selected text on web page to the search box (VERY useful!)
   5. Enable switchback to default search engine
   6. Show tooltip when community toolbar detected (detects other Conduit toolbars and offers add-option)
   7. Enable Search from address bar
   
   
8. To complete this long list of options to adjust your Toolbar two small but again useful tips:
1. you can adjust the size of the NLM search box (the most important toolbar element with 35+ search options from the NLM!) by simply sliding it to the desired size.
2. At all times you can make the toolbar disappear (or appear again) via the menu View; Toolbars.
   

A Meebo Chat box in Pubmed Toolbar

The Pubmed Toolbar now contains a Meebo chat Box to offer the growing community of users a direct way to contact eachother.

Some of the advantages of having the Pubmed Toolbar directly visible in your browser are:  being abled to see and control the news feeds in the Toolbar, read the new messages, ánd to see right away if somebody is in the Pubmed Meebo chat room. This -and móre- can all be done WITHOUT you having to leave the page(s) and sites you are looking at. No need to install anything, no Meebo account needed, just a click and you can start chatting in the room, or privately. This chatbox opens as a floating window that can be dragged to any corner or place of your screen. It will stay there on top of the windows, even if you decide to leave the sites.
That somebody in the chatroom has also installed the PubMed Toolbar and must be a kindred spirit ... (at least he/she has a simular interest in Pubmed...-)

New PubMed Design Preview Search added to PubMed Toolbar

Today the url of the preview for new Pubmed design came out: http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Enough changes to be very interesting, and to be added as search to the Pubmed Toolbar: http://pubmed.ourtoolbar.com

Image Search from History of Medicine added to Toolbar

Today the amazing image search of the IMG (Images of History of Medicine) was added to the NLM Toolbar long list of search options.

View prints, photographs, posters and other images

Rapid Research Notes RSS Feed?

Here is a quick and dirty RSS feed to the new Rapid Research Notes of the NLM:

• the Feedburner RSS
• The Headline Animator:
  

  

  ↑ Grab this Headline Animator

  
  
• and the widget for your blog or personal startpage:
  
  

Check All NLM RSS Feeds easily in one overview

The NLM Toolbar now contains 15 RSS feeds published by or related to NLM departments, resources or websites.
Click the image on the right and see how you can check them on the fly from your NLM toolbar.

You can also LISTEN to the Podcasts by Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., Director of the National Library of Medicine, narrates a weekly update highlighting new materials on MedlinePlus in the RADIO SECTION.

See a list of all available "MedlinePlus: NLM Director's Comments" podcasts.

QuickSearch Box NLM updated

With a big Thank You to one of the users of the NLM Toolbar (http://nlm.ourtoolbar.com/exe) I found out that IE8 is not really coping with the javascript that opens a floating window in the Toolbars i.e. the QuickSearch Box NLM.

But with the relative new feature of the Conduit Toolbars I was abled to add a new gadget on the fly with just the html code in it, et voila..!

Find Systematic reviews, Clinical Study Category & Medical Genetics Searching updated for Firefox & IE #PubMed Toolbar

Today I improved the Find Systematic reviews, Clinical Study Category & Medical Genetics Searching options in the PubMed toolbar. In some rare cases it turned back an error in Firefox. This is now solved.
Please have a look and let me know what you think.
http://pubmed.ourtoolbar.com

PubMed Toolbar Screencast: Part 1

This first part of the PubMed Toolbar Screencast by DIGICMB explains the many options users have to adjust the Toolbar Settings to their own liking.
Some options are:

• shrink/unshrink toolbar. This leaves only the icons with mouse-over text and saves space
  
• add gadgets (widgets): for business or pleasure
• clear your search history
• The Toolbar Options has 4 tabs with loads of settings:
• Personal Components: email notifyer, privacy, weather, radio(podcasts)
• Predefined Components: here you can choose which items of the toolbar you want to toggle on/off. If you do not like the News Ticker, just de-select it here.
• Useful Components: Add your own apps buttons on the Toolbar for fast access: All Microsoft Office apps, Paint, MSN, Registry editor etc
• Additional Settings: Very useful to set the functionality of the search box for search history, text selection, serch database preference etc.

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• PubMed Toolbar in the Spotlight (digicmb.blogspot.com)
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• Google Updates Firefox Toolbar with Personalized Tab Page (searchenginewatch.com)

Tags: pubmed, toolbar, screencast, medicine, health, search, plugin, add-on

One Overview, All NLM News

Image via Wikipedia

Currently the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Toolbar contains 14 RSS feeds of NLM Services and/or Divisions.
They can be read in one overview from the drop-down News Button and scanned very easily.
Without having to click th button, you can see how many unread items there are. The Toolbar keeps up with your reading, offers a refresh and delete option as well.

Furthermore you can listen - via the Toolbar RADIO to the podcasts of the
MedlinePlus: NLM Director's Comments
and to the NIH Podcasts.
Please let me know if you think something is missing out there.

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• PubMed Search & News Widget (digicmb.blogspot.com)
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PubMed Search & News Widget

OK, I think Toolbars are great for quick easy access to search databases, free or licensed databases. Users can use this jumpstart search to get to their preferred search engines direct from their browser window.

But not everybody is allowed to install browser plugins or add-ons.

To distribute the Toolbar functionality like the search & news options, I create derived widgets that can be used as a whole in many social networks, websites and intranet sites, everywhere where it is allowed to put up html.



The PubMed Search & News Widget is the latest one. I just got confirmation from Widgetbox that they approved it.
"Derived" in this case, means, the widget is using the PubMed Toolbar installed custom searches and the installed rss-feed of PubMed New & Noteworthy.

Tags: pubmed, nlm, search, widget, toolbar, socialnetworks

PubMed Toolbar in the Spotlight!

The first part of 2009 I am going to put the Pubmed Toolbar more in the spotlight.
I have added into the search box the options to directly search in:

• Find Systematic Reviews
• Clinical Study Category Search
• Medical genetics Search
• PubMed Help
• The NLM Gateway (all-in-one search)
• and of course PUbMed itself, the Journal Database & MESH

A MessageService was entered, and a Chat box powered by Meebo, a Twitter PubMed RSS to see who is tweeting about Pubmed on Twitter!
Usage has already doubled since Januari 1st 2009!

Tags: pubmed, toolbar, search, medical, nlm