Thanks for the comments, John! We're excited to hear you're working on a Drupal version of this. In working on a centrally hosted version, Ted and I hope to make the configurator a stand-alone component (all-javascript to the extent that it can be) so that it will be easier to plug it into any other blogging or CMS tool.
Respondses to your suggestions are inlined: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:08 PM, John Callahan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Very cool. Great idea. I've been trying to get people using Exhibit > through Drupal CMS because of it's ease of use. Of course, that > plugin/module doesn't help much with the javascript/html coding, most > the data part. I think both the plugin and your distribution site > sounds like great ideas. Just earlier today I was browsing the web > looking for SIMILE projects *in the wild.* It's a fun exercise looking > how others use the same tools. > (http://geo42.com/sites/simile/resources.html for a limited start) > > A few thoughts on Datapress, well, mostly it's future plans... Feel > free to ignore everything I say! (I'm just getting started with SIMILE > projects and semantic web concepts.) > > - I'm not sure I would have each exhibit actually load the data while > browsing. I would just use screenshots with basic metadata about each, > such as number of entries, type of features, organization, etc... I'd > love to see which entries use a timeline, ve mapview, use timeplot, ve > different types of data streams, etc... We kept going back and forth on this one. When we had a representative static version of the exhibit, we couldn't design one that was representative enough. We settled for the actual exhibit since we didn't have the designers touch, but any suggestion as to how to speed this up while still making it look good would be appreciated. > > - A nice ajax-like search would go well here. Either a "exhibit of > exhibits" or probably better would be a server-based faceted search > engine like apache solr. Neat idea. So each blog would have a listing/exhibit of all exhibits on the site? That shouldn't be too hard to make! > > - When "playing" an exhibit, how about just showing the exhibit on it's > own page? I use lightbox/thickbox for several items myself and not sure > if it really works here. If you're sticking with Wordpress for the > Youtube-like implementation, I would think of each exhibit as a > page/post. Just a thought. It should probably be a user option. The reason we lightboxed is that some exhibits are two wide for typically narrow-width blog themes, so we decided to give people the ability to have the exhibit "on the page" without it interfering with the theme. > > - How about offering comments on each exhibit? Maybe ratings as well? > This could work with a hot topics area, or most viewed, or highest > rated, etc... A bit harder, but definitely possible! > > - It be nice to offer various skins, layout plus color schemes. Based > on what features they add (facet side bars, timeline, etc..) you could > suggest a layout style. Maybe build this around Wordpress themes. I > wonder in Wordpress is you can display separate pages with it's own > theme? (I have some experience in Wordpress but not much.) > Also cool---probably useful in a second pass, once we've gotten everything else working well:) > > > Again, very cool, just like most things coming out of the SIMILE projects! > > - John > Thanks for your comments and suggestions! -Adam > ************************************************** > John Callahan > Geospatial Application Developer > Delaware Geological Survey, University of Delaware > 227 Academy St, Newark DE 19716-7501 > Tel: (302) 831-3584 > Email: [email protected] > http://www.dgs.udel.edu > ************************************************** > > > > > Adam Marcus wrote: >> Hello Simile Widgets friends! >> >> A few of us from Haystack have been working on a way to allow the >> average person with a web presence to configure an Exhibit by way of a >> graphical user interface. We've started with a WordPress plugin that >> introduces Exhibit to the blogging world. Our plugin is called >> DataPress, and is available here: >> >> http://projects.csail.mit.edu/datapress/ >> >> If you have a wordpress installation and want to include exhibits in >> your posts or pages without doing a lot of html and javascript >> hacking, take a look at this plugin. If you want to play around with >> DataPress before installing it, we've set up a demo site at: >> >> http://projects.csail.mit.edu/datapress/demosite (username/password = >> demo/demo) >> >> Our next steps will be to offer DataPress as a centrally hosted option >> (think YouTube or ManyEyes) so that it can be embedded in any web page >> while still being configured through a more convenient web interface. >> Since this is an early release, we're looking for any suggestions you >> might have as to how to improve our tools. We're excited to get your >> advice and comments, and to see how bloggers use the tool! >> >> -Ted and Adam >> >> > >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SIMILE Widgets" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/simile-widgets?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
