Ben O’Steen
Doing work today on using Kinnect as controller for an AR Drone
Kinnect not just camera, but also uses IR Projection – this allows it to calculate things like distance – darker stuff is further away
Open Sound Control library (OSC) – allows you to stream bytes from one place, and pick them up at another
Ben using OSC to broadcast tracking info from the Kinnect – just the data points – example tracking hands and shoulders
Has used this to make flapping motions map to up and down motion of AR Drone 
But idea is that based on the byte stream from OSC – means you can easily consume data without having to have Kinnect etc. – so provides lightweight way of getting data out and using. E.g. someone today has built a spotify control based on byte stream
Ben demoing ‘raw capture’ from Kinnect – pointing out issues with very thin items (e.g. chair legs) and reflective items
Ben says – if you want to hack Kinnect, don’t buy one that comes bundled with XBox because doesn’t have separate power supply if you buy bundled version
OpenNI is the place to start with Kinnect hacking – but still not straightforward at the moment – be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on this!
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Damian Steer
Linked Data requirements are scary!
RDFa = RDF in attributes – way of integrating structured data into HTML pages – people can read page, machines can read data
Example
<html xmlns:foaf=“http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/“>
<div about=“#person” typeof=:foaf:Person”>
<h2 property=“foaf:name”>Damian Steer</h2>
</div>
The attributes allow you to say what the data is that you are representing, data lives in the page – in this case div attributes say you are going to talk about a ‘person’ – saying it is a foaf:Person means external consumer will know it is the same type of thing as other foaf:Persons. h2 attribute say you have a foaf:name, and then contents of h2 is the name
Tips:
Augment your HTML – don’t write RDF
If you have more than two RDFa attributes on an element reconsider your design
Who is using RDFa? Google (Rich Snippets uses RDFa and other stuff), Facebook (Open Graph Protocol – dumbed down RDFa), Yahoo (Search Monkey), Rotten Tomatoes
Analysis of use of Microformats and RDFa
http://tinyurl.com/rdfa-deploy
Can see spike in RDFa usage
RDFa 1.1
Coming into html5
Simplify prefixes
Allows use of full URIs (instead of prefixes)
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Oops, missed a load:
ArchivesHub – http://archiveshub.ac.uk
APIs available – SRU, OAI-PMH
Entry Level Vocabulary – available as SRU service – http://archiveshub.ac.uk/api/sru/hub/cluster – e.g. search for world war, and get return of terms that co-occur in records – route of entry into controlled vocab from keyword search
Examples:
Genesis Project http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/genesis/hub – Women’s History Sources
LOCAH (see next talk)
…
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Ana Nelson (@ananelson) presenting http://dexy.it
Dexy is a documentation tool – runs through scripts and create documentation. Any code etc. produced in the documentation comes from the original code – so can easily refresh as code updates
Example shows how you can document multiple scripts in different languages in single set of documentation, and include outputs. Dexy runs tests so get test output. Dexy can also take screenshots as well while it runs the test.
Dexy can also output html and blog it directly to WordPress via API – Ana using code from ScraperWiki as an example. Dexy allows you to reference remote URL and it will pull into the document… can also pull source data from remote API/source.
Dexy is Python library, works well on Mac/Linux; Windows version there but not so polished; Command line tool
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Elsevier…
Took OpenSocial API and extended it – specifically so it could access some context from the web page you are viewing at the time
Applied extended OpenSocial to ScienceDirect – so can build gadgets that can be displayed next to articles etc.
SciVerse – http://www.hub.sciverse.com
Now have open market place for gadgets at http://www.applications.sciverse.com/ – open to all – need to register and then can develop – to develop need to know:
javascript
json
html
Examples include:
Integration of library catalogue data that matches keyword search next to article
[Presumably could integrate an OpenURL resolver?]
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Details at http://openbiblio.net/challenge/
Challenge from the Open Knowledge Foundation
Got datasets from
British Library (http://ckan.net/package/jiscopenbib-bl_bnb-1)
Cambridge University Library (http://ckan.net/package/jiscopenbib-cul-1)
IUCr dataset (http://ckan.net/package/iucr-acta-cryst-e)
You can enter challenge with just an idea as well as a development
Post ideas to http://ideas.okfn.org/ tagged with ‘openbiblio-challenge’
Example (not an entry into competition) – http://benosteen.com/timemap.index
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http://mymobilebristol.com
12 month JISC funded project – funding ends July 2011
Collaboration with Bristol City Council and others
Looking to integrte local area time and location sensitive data
Optimise delivery of data – esp. transport and sustainability information – for mobile devices
Supporting a ‘beta’ service at http://m.bristol.ac.uk – mainly aimed at students
Brings in data from OpenStreetMap as well
What next?
Integration with University systems
Single Sign On
LDAP (contacts search)
Z39.50 + Aleph API (Library Catalogue – Aleph is software that runs it)
Portal data
Going to work with a user experience expert, also looking to redesign UI
Working with council to see if can get more data
Developing a Virtual Tour of the University – iPhone and Android applications
Application is Java based; RESTful
Expose data as HTML; JSON and RDF
Data is stored in RDF store – now also support a SPARQL endpoint
Wiki at: http://mmb.ilrt.bris.ac.uk
Source code at: https://github.com/ilrt/mca
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Stephen Wilton (@StephenCWilton)
JISC Project Information Management System (PIMS) – http://pims.jisc.ac.uk
Developed API to expose data – http://tinyurl.com/689x4gd (currently in Beta)
RESTful API:
Exposes data over http
Allows creation and update of core data
Relationships between entities are represented as URI
CHALLENGE … – produce a mobile app that users the PIMS API
Platform agnostic but … within JISC staff the breakdown of mobile usage is roughly
40% iPhone
40% Android
10% Blackberry
Tips – DTDs exist for all GET calls
ML Schema Definitions exist for all PUT and POST calls
DTDs and XSDs are NOT symmetric
PUT and POST will only succedd if you authenticate
Some resources expose more information when authenticated
Prizes:
Announcement in http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform
£50 Amazon Voucher
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Blackboard – special project to show what can be done with Blackboard – all done with Building Blocks – so could be done by any existing Bb users
All done – Bb Learn 9.1 – 2 months of coding with 3 p/t devs – now over 10,000 users system
Result: http://www.coursesites.com – free site, anyone can setup a course
Publish to open web as well
Login via OpenID – i.e. use ‘login with twitter/google/yahoo/etc.’)
Ability to pull in blog content via RSS
Ability to blog directly into Bb (using Pebble – http://pebble.sourceforge.net/)
Custom themes
Pull in Social media – embed OpenGraph data into ‘splash page’ – capture social sharing information
Not everything can be ‘shared’ yet due to privacy concerns
Custom workflow for creating a course
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