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Alternative Platforms and Facilities
A discussion has been initiated on a number of other platforms and facilities which have been tested for OpenVCE purposes (see http://openvce.net/more), and some of which are now actively being considered to supplement the Drupal-based OpenVCE.net and Second Life virtual worlds elements. You are encouraged to enter the discussion and make your views known.
The main content management site for OpenVCE.net is based on a data base that is maintained for the community. This element is important and allows a range of data base and web services to be run far beyond the capabilities of social networking platforms with their own decisions on data structures, etc. Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress and the favorite open source systems for such uses. All ca rubn on a range of data bases, with MySQL being the top open source choice. Wordpress is more used for blogging. Joomla and Drupal have been tried, with Drupal offering facilities closer to our perceived needs at this stage. The Joomla site is archived at http://openvce.net/joomla/ but is not actively being developed at present.
- YouTube (and other video sharing sites) and Flickr (or other image sharing sites) are used, and the main OpenVCE.net site looks like it can link those in well, as used by the JOE area and ourselves already without replicating the hosting of material on OpenVCE.net.
- Ning gives very good social network and group setup facilities, and pages can contain link and content from other elements, but it cannot be integrated for uniform logins. They use their own "Ning Id" method. It could though provide better calendars and profiles than we can on Drupal (or Joomla).
- Grou.ps we are not now in favour of. It was too slow in use and error prone, and poor at handing resource upload, etc.. Though its Wiki was very good I think.
- Facebook, Yahoo Group and Google Group setups are available for OpenVCE, but all are not actively in our current plans.
- Moodle/Sloodle is setup live and operational at http://openvce.net/moodle/ and linked in to the collaboration facilities menu on the main site. We have used it already to try some advanced "mission" or "course" based facilities. A Sloodle screen that allows presentations based on a set of URLs mixing web pages, audio, video and images is already operational in the I-Zone. The "OpenVCE Course" is a standing open-ended course for these experiments. There is a Sloodle classroom on Vue North for testing things.
- Google Wave is under development and may offer interesting live connection facilities for collaborative spaces in future. A test OpenVCE wave for authenticated "sandbox" users is at http://openvce.net/gwave/
Use of Ning and Moodle?
Forum discussion switched to Ning
For test purposes, the forum discussion is being switched to Ning at: http://openvce.ning.com
OpenVCE.net or Drupal Specific Points
Though any OpenVCE.net or Drupal specific site points could be noted here too. Testing of latest activity, heartbeat and other social network awareness features are now underway by Stephen.
Discussion now switched back
Discussion now switched back to OpenVCE.net to continue tests of improved social network awareness features introduced into the Drupal-based system. This includes a "heartbeat" facility to let everyone know latest happening and recent activity, an inter-member messaging facility, and improved layout of the netry page and the menus to promote activity awareness.
Added site "Heartbeat"
Added site "Heartbeat" to give some indication of activity...
This comment is a test for this :-)
Replies to This Discussion from August 3rd to August 13th
Replies to This Discussion from August 3rd to August 13th (moved from Ning) - http://openvce.ning.com/forum/topics/alternative-platforms-and
Reply by Jeff Hansberger on August 3, 2009 at 5:45pm
This is a good comparison chart. The Ning platform appears to compare well in features and it's rated website usability.
For some reason, I thought that Ning had a live-chat capability but the chart says no and going back, I couldn't find one. Is it correct that Ning has no live-chat capability? One of the biggest function omission for Ning (and most of the platforms compared here) is the OpenID support. Exploring the ID authentication alternatives mentioned below is important.
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 8:05pm
Ning does have a chat facility itself. As with all these systems its only for its own community, and not connected to other chat environments.
I put in Ning chat, I-Say link to SL and Google Wave all under a Chat... top level tab for tests.
The I-Say tool is better as its a single chat tool that ALSO links up with a nominated area in Second Life - initially the I-Zone on VCE.
See new chat... tab on http://openvce.ning.com
Ning makes it easy to embed such tools/applets... and Google Wave will be same. I added a Wave to the Chat... tab too for tests.
Reply by Jeff Hansberger on August 3, 2009 at 8:06pm
Looking beyond the chart and the article, it appears that some of the other platforms reviewed have significant advantages for our use. Here's a quick summary for discussion tomorrow:
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 8:13pm
Dont' t get too carried away :-) The essence is integration and aggregation. These things will change with fashion and whims, as well as technology. Key is to have a really solid core of conceptual capabilities everyone can understand and which are common, and could be provided by any of a range of platforms. The we should choose good stable and well integrated ones... and keep it to a bare minimum... hence the focus on what we can do with ONLY Joomla, and the ONLY Drupal at first.
We will though investigate and test any that offer real faclities that we cannot get elsewhere,. we still have no nicely integrated Wiki for example. Though http://openvce.net/wiki/ provides the media Wiki offering that we can fall back to on need, and we have a good (and perhaps more useful in editign permission erms, but undeveloped) Wiki in Moodle at http://openvce.net/moodle/mod/wiki/view.php?id=19
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 3:12pm
There is the issue of wanting a single sign on for all systems where possible. Ning has its own Ning Id mechanism. Drupal is more open, and OpenVCE.net already includes Open Id logins. Moodle is also set up to authenticate using the user's Drupal OpenVCE.net username and password.
It seems as if the Wordpress mechanism for authenticating against the Ning Id for a social network has also been used in Dokuwiki... so this might be a basis for a Ning Id authentication method in Drupal.
DokuWiki PHP code at: http://www.dokuwiki.org/auth:ning via http://www.dokuwiki.org/auth.
Reply by Jeff Hansberger on August 3, 2009 at 5:20pm
From a non-DB person, can the functions and ways a DB and web service type site are used for be laid out? Thanks.
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 7:50pm
Essentially, with the DB/content management systems like Drupal and Joomla we have some control over contents and data base structure, and can do lookups to link up to web data in web services. With the social networks like Facebook and Ning we have to take the structure they choose, and I don't think we can do DB lookups at all. Though we do need to explore the API more for these systems.
Reply by Jeff Hansberger on August 3, 2009 at 5:30pm
Within Ning, I've downloaded a few apps that might be useful. They are as follows:
Tungle.me seems the most promising in its support for scheduling.
Most if not all of these apps requires software to be downloaded and installed, which could be problematic for folks that do not have admin rights to their computers.
Are we limited to the apps from the Ning app list or can others be developed or added?
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 7:59pm
Zorap looks like stanadard chat and media sharing, does it offer somethig specific you feel we want Jeff?
I think we need a chat tool on the web that ALSO connects to the 3D Space. Hence I-Say at present.
Though the method used in that and its in-world relay object could be extended to other open chat frameworks.
Tungle.me - again, there are a lot of these scheduling apps.. indeed one of my ex PhD students set up a US company to do this:-) Ning itself has a calendar system and event management with invites, e-mail to participants, etc. We shoud see what the core does and only add what is essential at this early stage I suggest. Its then easy to add in other stuff when there is a real gap. All this stuff is exploding right now and there are a multitude of ways to add such things in. Its a question of what will win ouy in the marketplace. In earlier OpenVCE we also used EventBrite and Doodle Polls to do Tungle.me type things. I agree that shared evemt managemenmt and communication is important.
Friends activities... suggest we get a core that works before adding too much!
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 8:18pm
Go to Ning "My Page" and look at "add apps" in left column to see the wide range of apps any user can add. Any compatible app can be added.. e.g. by just putting in app URL... see for example:
http://developer.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1185512%3ABlogPost%... and http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=Ning
Reply by Austin Tate on August 3, 2009 at 2:59pm
A comparison of social networking platforms and their facilities by TechCrunch is available from 2007 in:
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/wlsn_comparison_chart.html
Social Awareness Enhancements at OpenVCE.net
I've been exploring the new changes and saw your assessment on the GoingOn platform. It's disappointing that it's not developed/used more extensively. I don't think that the social networking and awareness features in Drupal will be sufficient from what I've seen of the latest changes. I don't think the heartbeat module is robust and polished enough to act as the primary awareness mechanism. I'm not sure of the utility of the blog tag cloud or the shout facility. I'd like to see the use of administered posts like "What's happening..." used sparingly as it takes quite a lot of effort from one or more folks to maintain that awareness and put forth the effort to keep it updated. The more automatically updated type of awareness indicators, the better.
I would've posted this online but I'm having major difficulty navigating and finding posts and information on the Drupal site. It also takes considerable effort on my end to stay updated on the latest posts to books, forums, blogs, etc... What we need is a lot of information in a glance. The use of graphics and profile pics helps that for example. Instead of trying to find the grayed out text among posts like Drupal, Ning and Facebook provide a picture of the respondent. Much quicker and easier to follow and track threaded discussions or activity updates (Wave will provide this on the threaded discussions). I think there's way too much atm on the homepage. As you've said before, less is better. We've been in exploration mode but I think we need to begin streamlining. If we can find a suitable social networking solution, that would really propel us forward.
Since GoingOn was a dead-end, I suggest we investigate the runner-up, kickApps and possibly people aggregator (http://www.broadbandmechanics.com/) as a possible platform to integrate with Drupal. People aggregator may be too $$, please check it out and let me know what you think of these two.
Tag Cloud and Heartbeat
Thanks for the notes on the Drupal setup. I definitely agree we have too much switched on. But I think the features are there, and integration of plug ins now and elements like the Wave and other apps will be easy. It does though need some coherence of design to be what we really want ... and your ideas on a task/activity centric view are very much in step with our own feelings.
I find the "tag cloud" absolutely the best thing if its properly sensitized to the pace of the community activity -- which it can easily be set to and even changed if there are busy and quiet times. Its become my main way into this and other environments that use such tag clouds in fact.
The heartbeat thing is fully automatic,and rule/event driven. Its really very flexible and customizable, and I think could have a place to play. Its the sort of thing pretty much all social networks sites have. A big decision is whether to place it in the central contents area and give it more space as the current activities of the community.. as many networks do, or just to have it as context to the right. We also need to get some consensus on what is included in it. At the moment there is too much minor stuff included.
The Tag Cloud
The tag could seems cluttered to me, and some tags are broken across lines. (For example, at the moment "Press Release" is on two lines.) The order of tags looks random. Yet position does matter:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud reporting some research re perception of tag clouds:
(BTW, it's nice that cutting and pasting from Wikipedia kept Wikipedia's bullet points automatically.)
Books in drupal
Still don't seem very intuitive for collaboration of a single thread with comments, like a wiki. I wasn't able to apply any formatting (bold, text size, bullets, etc.) in a reply. My recommendation is that we use an integrated wiki and not use the book feature of Drupal.
WYSIWYG, Books and Wikis
We do have consider relative functionality versus ease of use. We can enable a lot of a little.
I have turned back on the WYSIWYG editor as I think this will be needed. We had tested using a simpler text base editor more suited to just comment and replies to forums. But its not enough for core wiki style content creation.
We do have Media Wiki ready to go if we wish to use it at http://openvce.net/wiki - or in an OenVCE.net frame at http://openvce.net/openvce-wiki (but editing needs a separate login currently - that is still under investigation).
MediaWiki enabled as community knowledge sharing facility
MediaWiki - available at URL http://openvce.net/wiki - is now set as the primary knowledge sharing facility that all authenticated and logged in members can create, share, refine and maintain. Drupal "Books" (Knowledge Books as they are referred to in OpenVCE.net) continue to be available as admin/group leader provided and edited pages that can direct people at other site content (including the Wiki conent). Other members can contact admin or group leaders to suggest changes in book pages.
DICE Requirements and Platform Table
Shall we remove some of the old WoSCR community columns for platforms we would no longer consider, or that have dated? E.g. remove FaceBook and Group.ps