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August 22, 2007, 10:14 AM ET
Social Site of the Very Small Makes It Very Big
You may be busy with Digg and Facebook. You may even be using them as learning tools. But scientists who focus on the tiniest parts of the universe have their own big Web 2.0 hit, called nanoHUB.
A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and people who study matter on that scale dream of making transistors from a single molecule and machines the size of blood cells that scour the body for cancer. At nanoHUB, they have a place to share their ideas.
Supercomputing Online this week touts the site’s appeal:
“Like YouTube and Digg, nanoHUB consists of user-supplied content. On the site, users find software, podcasts, PowerPoint lectures, and even Flash-based video tutorials. Like sites such as Flickr or YouTube, nanoHUB has dynamic tags that automatically aggregate into subject categories. Like Netflix, users can rate any resource on nanoHUB. Software, podcasts, lectures, and contributors’ contributions all can be rated by the community.”
This science gateway, which is hosted at Purdue University, has about 24,000 users. That’s small by YouTube standards. But in the nanoworld, it’s the biggest thing going. — Josh Fischman
Categories: Research
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