Protocols.io – 3 days left

As Labrigger mentioned earlier this week, ZappyLab is running a Kickstarter campaign to jump start their crowd-sourced protocol repository, Protocols.io.

Perhaps the most attractive reward they’re offering for pledging are the Black Russian Espresso cookies, made with vodka and Kahlua.

The idea of Protocols.io is to mitigate the tendency for every lab to reinvent the wheel. Using a crowd sourcing approach (like Wikipedia) protocols can be refined, and people can share which antibodies or reagents work well instantly with a large community, rather than relying on word-of-mouth or trial-and-error.

In addition to Protocols.io, and their BenchTools apps, they also run PubChase, a reference manager that makes recommendations, and has an active forum for career advice, essays, and editorials.

Again, all of this stuff is free. If you’re interested, check it out.

Disclosure: Labrigger composed this post. We’re intrigued by the project and have intended to put up a post on it for some time. Now’s a good time. ZappyLab paid to ensure top visibility for the last week of their Kickstarter campaign, but did not provide input into the content of the post.