New Google Maps for Next-Gen Sequencers

A few months back I blogged about James Hadfield's excellent Google Map for locating next-generation sequencing facilities. Some time has passed and the map has become very popular with over 100,000 views registered. Keen to create this into a really great community resource, James and I have been collaborating in our spare time on a revamped version. There are a couple of major improvements over the first version;

• you can now filter down to locate and compare sequencing platforms
• the placemarkers are now clustered to make the map faster and to make it easier to visualise hotspots of sequencing machines
• it is now easy to add new genomics platforms (including microarrays) as they become available
• you can easily add and edit facilities, which is subject to moderation to prevent spam

Perhaps most excitingly for stats-nerds, this is all database-driven so the long awaited league tables of sequencing platforms can be calculated automatically. However, mindful that the information could be made more accurate, I have decided to leave the league tables off until people have had a bit of time to check the map for errors, and add any missing facilities.

We're really keen to gather feedback so either post a comment on the blog, or get in touch directly if you have ideas you want to discuss. We were also thinking about extending it for other non-genomics utilities, for example next-generation proteomics. If you are working in such a field and would be interested in collaborating, again get in contact.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go check out the map right now!