"Importantly, a social network centered on genes facilitates biological serendipity. When you create a new BioGPS gene list, wouldn't it be great to see that your colleague Jane has another list with a significant overlap to yours? When you search for resources on SNPs, maybe John just registered a plugin for a SNP annotation site he's developed. When you search BioGPS for "diabetes", wouldn't it be useful to see all the relevant genes, gene lists, plugins, layouts and data sets that are shared in your network?" - Attila Csordas from Bookmarklet

Neil, I think I need to troll through the archives of your blog more often for inspiration... ;) A key thing I wanted to emphasize is that many people already use BioGPS for exploring gene annotation (150k pageviews, 23k visits in Jan), and if you use/like BioGPS then the social features tag along without doing anything new. This is unlike many other "facebook for scientists" sites where you sign up and add personal content in the *hope* you'll reap value later on. - Andrew Su

Liking this: no overhead to the social part, just use the resource. - Walter Jessen

the BioGPS iPhone app was the 1st serious biology-related app that 'made' me spend a significant time with science on the iPhone - Attila Csordas

Fantastic Attila, great to hear! Honestly we haven't spent too much time/effort on the iPhone app, so hearing the positive feedback may encourage us to develop that further... (Having said that, the majority of our development effort will probably always be on the web UI...) - Andrew Su

When you hear it from someone who gets it, it just sounds so obvious. Yea Andrew! - Mr. Gunn

Andrew, is there an android app in the pipeline? - Walter Jessen

Walter, to play devil's advocate for a moment, we've considered that _any_ serious app development might not be worth it for BioGPS. Unless we take advantage of a phone feature aside from the browser (shake the phone for a random gene?) then it's essentially a glorified mobile interface. If that's the case, then why not focus on a dedicated mobile interface (sneak peak http://biogps.gnf.org/m) with better cross-browser/device support and less headache of dealing with the plugin framework? Thoughts? - Andrew Su

Agreed, a dedicated mobile interface is all that's really necessary. I'm more interested in that than an app. - Walter Jessen

Oh well. Scientifically that's the way I'm thinking, but part of me is disappointed no one seems to like my shake-phone-random-gene idea... - Andrew Su

@Andrew shaking is cool. How about an app that let's you "feel" an entire chromosome by sliding fingers across the screen. Haptic feedback will let user know when they encounter genes or other features. In high-res mode, haptic feedback will reveal highly positioned nucleosomes, paused polymerases, other DNA binding proteins. Or perhaps higher-ordered chromatin tangles. Sort of like a "genome as fishing line" app -- use the iphone to find the knots in the genome. I'm kidding, of course, but I thought it may add to your shake-phone-random-gene app. - Steve Koch