Thirty-five years later, more and more technologies are being implemented to attract and retain users to businesses online.  "Recommendation systems" are part of Web 2.0  innovations which, in the words of Alex Iskold of www.readwriteweb.com are used in online commerce systems to drive browsers (shoppers) towards a sale.  Satisfaction with the user experience can lead to more loyalty as well, increasing searching, browsing and conversions to sales.

What does this have to do with professional research? Plenty!  There are plenty of other Web 2.0 innovations like social tagging which allows researchers to work more efficiently despite an explosion of new content and new user-generated modalities.  Some blogs and podcasts are worth monitoring when clients need specific kinds of information.  Blogs and podcasts can be accessed using blog search engines as well as podcasting-specific search engines.

It's important to stay current with the uses and influence of bloggers.  But let the buyer beware!  Some bloggers get paid to write about advertised products and services as part of the PayPerPost network - see www.payperpost.com.  Advertisers in the network pay bloggers to promote their products, services or company influencing opinions, user experiences and buyer behavior. 

Search engines too are growing in numbers and sophistication and count in the thousands. Credit ResearchBuzz to report that you can find custom search engines through Google.  One that we like for the medical community is Scirus ("seer" or "prophet") - it specializes in scientific information - www.scirus.com.  Scirus currently covers over 300 million science-related web pages including .edu, .org, .ac.uk, .com, .gov sites and over 87 million other relevant STM and University sites from around the globe.

Drug information too is available in both free and paid services. One of the useful free resources is the Cochrane Library (www.cochrane.org)  which includes a source of reliable and up to date information called the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 

U.S. government sources too are easy to use and helpful to search for information about medical subjects including genetic and rare disease disorders.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.  See NIH at www.nih.gov.