MyLab - for everyone of us... - The program for Lab Journal and different DataBases... (Dec/06/2006 )
Due to the type of my (and yours also, probably) work it would be nice to have a software which could help me (us) in our everydays work:
1. Organize Projects and Experiments Log
Usually, I work with several projects - about different proteins, genes, strains... Experiments of all of them are mixed together in my Lab Journal. It is not so easy to find trendline or all the detailed data regarding one particular project (let's say, study of some mutant strain). One really has to search throughout whole lab journal or even several of them.
It would be nice to have one place - some kind of log - regarding projects, with search and filtering possibilities
It would be nice to have a possibility to write conclusions for all experiments and projects, so that afterwards it would be easy to do general conclusions.
2. Databases of: Protocols, Plasmids, PCR Products, Samples etc.
All the information necessary for the work is on the desktop! One can create the databases of these things with commenting, searching and filtering possibilities
3. Comments (Memos) Database
One could store all the ideas which come to one's mind and review them afterwards. One can create some kind of KnowledgeBase...
4. Very important
One could print even the most sophisticated report, based on these data, any time and in any quantity...
I have been searching for such a software in internet but still did not find any appropriate. Either they are web-based or the functions do not fit my needs, or they are not free.
Therefore I decided to write the program which would:
have all these functions
be small and fast
not depend on other soft (since I do not want to do it web-based like Apache/PHP/MySQL or so...
be portable to work on different systems (Windows, Linux etc)
I've begun writing in MS-Access and Access-Basic.
It is small (just one file) and quite fast database with needed functions.
It does not depend on other soft (In fact, only on MS-Access which is quite popular)
It is not portable yet but I hope OpenOffice will soon be able to open it...
My questions to you
1. What software do you use? Have you found something that suits your needs?
2. Your recommendations regarding other functions? I have some ideas to implement (like calendar with tasks) but would love to hear some from you as well.
3. Recommendations about the environment? It's not finished yet so that we could discuss the quiestion of changing environment (I mean MS-Access). Maybe it is better to choose another environment like Qt (which is portable under Win/Linux) or something else?
4. Would you like to participate in creating such a program? I am not a professional programmer, so would love to do it together with other people.
Waiting for your reply,
Sincerely
Proteos
Is there anybody out there? 
sorry, i don't have much input 
your idea sounds really good; it sounds like a lot of work too, i wish you luck! if i knew anything about programming, i would offer my help, but i'm pretty useless there
Good idea!!
But I don't think I can help because I have no computer programming skills .
May be someone with programming skill will be interest in this project.
not exactly what you're looking for but you should have a look at these tools:
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.evernote.com/en
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/...0487701033.aspx
sadly those tools are mainly for sorting/searching information, not so much for generating. so you still have to do your graphs in excel for example...but still they can be used as advanced lab-books