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Jisc Tags: ProgressPosts;_VRERI;_JISC;_BlogMyData
Progress Post Type: FinalReport
This is the official "end-of-project" progress post as required by JISC for monitoring purposes. However, although the funded period of this project has ended, development and promotion will continue, and this blog will continue to be updated.
Title of Primary Project Output: BlogMyData: A Virtual Research Environment for collaborative visualization of environmental data
Screenshots or diagram of prototype: See All Hands presentation: Presentation given at AHM2010
Description of Prototype: The BlogMyData VRE allows scientists to explore data visually using a dynamic web interface, then make comments about features in the data on a blog. Colleagues discover these blog entries and offer further information, providing answers to research questions through comments.
End User of Prototype: Practising scientist in a team, perhaps jointly interpreting the results of a complex climate simulation.
Link to working prototype: The data used in the VRE pilot are not public and so we cannot at present provide a public link. In the meantime, this screencast provides a good overview of capabilities: New demonstration video.
Link to end user documentation: Documentation for the use of the Godiva2 front-end can be found here. End-user documentation for the blogging component still needs to be written.
Link to code repository or API: Code for front-end visualization (Godiva2) is kept at http://ncwms.sf.net; code for back-end blog engine is kept in Soton (TBD)
Date prototype was launched: The prototype has been available for test users for several months, although more "polishing" is needed before a wider release can be made.
Project Team Names, Emails and Organisations: See http://code.google.com/p/vreri/wiki/BlogMyData.
Project Website: http://www.blogmydata.org/
PIMS entry: https://pims.jisc.ac.uk/projects/view/1593
Table of Contents for Project Posts: http://blogs.blogmydata.org/projectblog/group/Progress%20posts.
Progress Post Type: FinalReport
This is the official "end-of-project" progress post as required by JISC for monitoring purposes. However, although the funded period of this project has ended, development and promotion will continue, and this blog will continue to be updated.
Title of Primary Project Output: BlogMyData: A Virtual Research Environment for collaborative visualization of environmental data
Screenshots or diagram of prototype: See All Hands presentation: Presentation given at AHM2010
Description of Prototype: The BlogMyData VRE allows scientists to explore data visually using a dynamic web interface, then make comments about features in the data on a blog. Colleagues discover these blog entries and offer further information, providing answers to research questions through comments.
End User of Prototype: Practising scientist in a team, perhaps jointly interpreting the results of a complex climate simulation.
Link to working prototype: The data used in the VRE pilot are not public and so we cannot at present provide a public link. In the meantime, this screencast provides a good overview of capabilities: New demonstration video.
Link to end user documentation: Documentation for the use of the Godiva2 front-end can be found here. End-user documentation for the blogging component still needs to be written.
Link to code repository or API: Code for front-end visualization (Godiva2) is kept at http://ncwms.sf.net; code for back-end blog engine is kept in Soton (TBD)
Date prototype was launched: The prototype has been available for test users for several months, although more "polishing" is needed before a wider release can be made.
Project Team Names, Emails and Organisations: See http://code.google.com/p/vreri/wiki/BlogMyData.
Project Website: http://www.blogmydata.org/
PIMS entry: https://pims.jisc.ac.uk/projects/view/1593
Table of Contents for Project Posts: http://blogs.blogmydata.org/projectblog/group/Progress%20posts.
Progress Post Type: ValueAdd
Jisc Tags: disruptiveInnovation;progressPosts;rapidInnovation;VRERI;JISC;BlogMyData
It's well known that creating animations of scientific data creates compelling visualizations that can greatly aid understanding and lead to discoveries. Our first prototypes of the BlogMyData system revealed through user feedback (see First user feedback) that the capability to create animations, annotate them and share them with colleagues, could be a real "win" for the project. Therefore we've spent more time than we originally anticipated on streamlining the whole process of dealing with animations in the system.
The Godiva2 system (the visualization front-end) natively generates animations as animated GIFs, but these have many shortcomings, notably a lack of ability to control the speed of the animation in the browser: a frame-by-frame advance/rewind capability would be very important to users (see Frame-by-frame animations on the web?). We have been experimenting with many possibilities, including producing AVIs for download and using the latest HTML5 features in modern browsers. But this is still under active investigation - if we can crack this problem and make a really nice, streamlined environment for users to quickly create and annotate animations it will be an excellent result for the project. Variability between browsers is currently a major stumbling block- perhaps we are a year or two ahead of time in our ambitions.
Note that we can't tolerate any lossiness in compression, which rules out many animation formats, e.g. MPEG. Producing Flash videos is another possibility, but many Flash movie players are designed for streamed movies, not frame-by-frame scientific videos. (Also, Flash will not work on devices we're keen to target, notably the iPad.)
Jisc Tags: disruptiveInnovation;progressPosts;rapidInnovation;VRERI;JISC;BlogMyData
It's well known that creating animations of scientific data creates compelling visualizations that can greatly aid understanding and lead to discoveries. Our first prototypes of the BlogMyData system revealed through user feedback (see First user feedback) that the capability to create animations, annotate them and share them with colleagues, could be a real "win" for the project. Therefore we've spent more time than we originally anticipated on streamlining the whole process of dealing with animations in the system.
The Godiva2 system (the visualization front-end) natively generates animations as animated GIFs, but these have many shortcomings, notably a lack of ability to control the speed of the animation in the browser: a frame-by-frame advance/rewind capability would be very important to users (see Frame-by-frame animations on the web?). We have been experimenting with many possibilities, including producing AVIs for download and using the latest HTML5 features in modern browsers. But this is still under active investigation - if we can crack this problem and make a really nice, streamlined environment for users to quickly create and annotate animations it will be an excellent result for the project. Variability between browsers is currently a major stumbling block- perhaps we are a year or two ahead of time in our ambitions.
Note that we can't tolerate any lossiness in compression, which rules out many animation formats, e.g. MPEG. Producing Flash videos is another possibility, but many Flash movie players are designed for streamed movies, not frame-by-frame scientific videos. (Also, Flash will not work on devices we're keen to target, notably the iPad.)