Finding Laboratory Informatics Resources

In last month’s “Out on a LIMS^®” newsletter (http://www.geometrick.com/industry-resources.html), I bemoaned the fact that there’s no good place to go for information in our industry (to subscribe to the free, monthly newsletter, follow this link:  http://www.geometrick.com/newsltr_signup.htm).

My Frustration
One issue is that, as we’ve gotten more and more people trying to address the issue of creating lists of software vendors and of consultants to do the work, we no longer have a single place to look. Now, we have many more lists but none are comprehensive. Personally, I’ve given up trying to look for all the lists to get my company listed into. As a business, I don’t feel it worth my time to look for all these places since, overall, I don’t get business back that makes up for the time it would take to sign-up for all of them. And many are free for me to get listed on so it’s really the issue that my time that I’d take to do this isn’t really free (this is my comment to those who write to me with their new tool insisting I'm a cretin for not taking the time to list on their free tool).

And as a person who also does these types of searches, I don’t want to look at a lot of small lists. I either want one really terrific list or I’ll just do a Google search and see what pops-up.

Misleading Search Results
On top of all that, after reading my newsletter, last month, one reader reminded me that some of these lists charge people. While few charge just to get on the list, quite a number charge for people to advertise on them or to get a premium spot. Here’s an example: if you do a Google search, you’ll see a number of companies pop to the premium top area because they’ve paid for the Google ads and most/all of us know that these are the paid spots so we mainly ignore them. But the point is that if we see company LIMS-O-Matic pop-up to the paid section for the Google ads, we know that’s why it’s there. In some of the sites where we’d find these companies listed, these polices aren’t clear and when a company is prominently shown, it’s not always obvious it’s listed first because that’s a paid advertiser.

It’s similar to reading one of the magazines where you get an advertising page that’s marked something like “Advertising Section.” If you see company ELN-N-Ya with a two-page ad, you know that their paid advertisement (although, sometimes, the “Advertising Section” text is small and/or a faded grey to make it hard to read).

Side note: I'm looking for companies that want to pay me big bucks to name their products. I've got a host of them all ready to go with LIMS-O-Matic and ELN-N-Ya just a couple of my fantastic examples.  ;-)

Finally
The point is this: it’s not wrong to advertise or have advertisers. It’s just the age-old question the media has been having about whether you’re crossing an ethical line in the way it’s done. Experts like me kind of know when they’re seeing something that’s an ad that’s not labeled as such, but new people to the industry don’t know that. Tip: when you do a search in some of these sites and a company is displayed at the top of your search who seems unrelated to what you searched for and is not in alphabetical order (and all the others are), then it’s probably a paid advertiser, but it's sometimes not even that obvious.

Back to my original point: I’m just going to use Google and am currently suggesting the same to everyone who asks me. And, before you ask, no, Google isn’t paying me to say that, I don’t have friends at Google, no relationship with Google to report, at all, just my opinion based on my recent experience (phew! these disclaimers tire me out!!).

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/