Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA #21
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It's slightly more complicated than this, inasmuch as sometimes a subset of (links to) media is returned (e.g. four song titles) are returned, and the user can select among those; and at other times a collection of media is presented one at a time (e.g. photographs of 1960s TV celebrities), with the user choosing when to go on to the next. (I need to sit down with the system and capture the different modalities of media display.) It would be nice to store some session info (as is done in the stand-alone CIRCA) containing the media items that had already been displayed and preventing them from being displayed again during the same session. Also, it would be useful to (automatically?) determine the user's geographical locale, and return only content appropriate to that locale (e.g. Swedish songs for Swedish users - or, at least, users in Sweden - but not users in the UK, although we might want to be more geographically/culturally precise: Scottish content for users in Scotland? Sheffield content for users in Sheffield?). |
I bet. That was just my ignorant "starter for 10". |
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I'm not sure which of the behaviours and interface decisions within CIRCA are essential (based on some design, theory or rationale) and which accidental (it could easily have been otherwise), but I guess the fact that the current system has been trialled with users with - at least to my knowledge - no issues means that they are all effectively essential now. Which, of course, does not mean that it is possible to replicate them through a web-browser! |
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Given this and the fact I am currently unable to run CIRCA I'm unable to determine the "must have" features. Thus we'll need a list of features that would need to be reproduced. We could come up with that now. Or after the 1st release of Brian when there will be something to act as a reference point. |
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Would it help to see some screenshots of CIRCA, Steve? Perhaps not for understanding the essential component, or the random selection, but to at least get a glimpse of the interface? Here's a presentation we did on the project. Somehow the interface is in Swedish, which it's not in reality... but you might get the concept anyway. http://dart-gbg.org/public/anpassningar/INLIFE_Circa.pdf |
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And there's a video demonstrating CIRCA on this page: The Swedish 'version' that @sancarder links to (which looks great :-) also shows what I mean by the localisation of CIRCA - the interface must be translated, and also the content ("Borta med Vinden"). (The first photograph, showing the very smiley children on a country road, gives a good example of localisation/contextualisation: I think these are British kids and the photo was taken probably in 1939 or 1940 at the start of Second World War, since they're all carrying boxes which I think are their recently issued (since they all still have them!) gas masks, and I'm guessing that they've just been evacuated to the countryside. Hence this photo is likely to be more relevant to a Briton born in the 1930s than to a Swede born in the 1950s.) |
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Very helpful! I did briefly see CIRCA a very long time ago. Now we just need a list of must have features. For user and supporter. What version of windows is CIRCA known to work on? I might be able to use one of the Windows VMs for older versions of IE |
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The only computer on which I've seen CIRCA running is a desktop PC (with touchscreen, although it can be mouse-piloted as well) running Windows 8.1. Since the code is some (5-10?) years old now, I'd guess it will probably also run under Windows 7 and maybe Vista. I think it has also been used on tablet PCs, but I'm not sure of the specs - maybe @sancarder knows? (It was written, I think, using Adobe Director, something which I'd previously not heard of, with maybe other bits of custom code thrown in.) You're right about pinning down the must-haves - that's on my to-do list... |
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I agree, @stephenpotter, it clearly shows the need for localisation! |
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I'll try win 7 first then. I believe Director was dominant for multimedia in the 90s but it's future seems unclear as Flash and AIR appear to have become more popular recently. My View is HTML5 is a good solution now and getting better all the time. Certainly for what we need for Brian |
SteveALee
changed the title
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I've got it working in the IE10 in win 7 VM in VirtualBox! Enjoying an old Tommy Trinder video. The pointer was not showing making it hard wit ha mouse but fortunately my laptop has a touch screen which works just fine with the VM |
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Nice! Then it will be a bit easier for you to see for yourself! |
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@stephenpotter, we are about to start to produce some Swedish materials for the CIRCA app, so we can use it in the trials (and as a basis for the real app). We'd need to know what categories the music, videos and images will be sorted into. As I understood it at our meeting Wednesday, you were not clear about this as you will need to reconsider because of licence issues. Is this correct, or do you have some categories for me? |
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@sancarder, I don't have the categories for you yet (unfortunately I keep being distracted by other tasks this week), but I hope to get something to you very soon (some time (early, I hope) next week). I don't think that the licence issues will affect these categories (although they can make collecting material from certain categories more difficult than others), so from demos of CIRCA you probably have a fairly good idea of what would be needed anyway. (Actually, I think it's difficult to decide objectively whether a particular photograph, movie or song will provoke memories; moreover, you have to keep in mind the ages of the target audience - content that is too old or too recent will probably provoke fewer reminiscences. And, of course, we're limited by what is (freely) available to us. It's not a straightforward task, I think.) When are you planning to start your trials using CIRCA? |
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@SteveALee - probably a silly question, but why did you need IE10 (or, indeed, any browser) to run CIRCA in your virtual machine? |
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@stephenpotter Actally not such a silly Q as how I wrote it made it seem relevant. I used the VM called "IE10 on win7" to get Win7. IE is totally irrelevant but Microsoft provide those VMs purely for IE testing :) For future reference these are the steps
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@stephenpotter - I have now gone through the xml files in CIRCA and extracted categories and themes. I attach my overview here, could you tell me if it seems correct or if I have misunderstood something? Also, I'mm wondering about the Dundee Life category. I can see it in the folder where the files are stored, but it doesn't pop up when running CIRCA as an own category. How does it work? Is it somehow vowen into the other categories? |
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@stephenpotter Also, we'd like to begin starting the trials for CIRCA during the first half of March. |
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@sancarder - I'm sorry that I haven't been in touch about this sooner - in truth, I've been waiting (am still waiting!) for feedback from Arlene and Sarah about the appropriate categories to use in CIRCA. |
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@sancarder - what will you need, in terms of CIRCA, for the first half of March? It is extremely unlikely that the web-based version of CIRCA will be available that soon. |
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@sancarder - another possibility we've been discussing is the use of YouTube to supply video content. If we were to link to videos on official YouTube channels, this would seem to avoid many of the copyright issues that we have for videos. However, the videos often have advertisements (either overlays or in-line), and we would have to follow YouTube's branding policy (there are other pros and cons too...). There seems to be a lot of nice archive material for the UK (through channels such as British Pathe, the British Film Institute and the BBC), but unfortunately I could not find so much for Sweden. |
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@stephenpotter Thanks a lot for your document, that is helpful now that we're trying to produce some Swedish material! Regarding YouTube, I think it's a feasible option if there are suitable content there. The ads are not good, of course. I guess there is no way around it, like skipping the first 30 seconds or so... For music, a similar approach could be via Spotify - but of course they have ads too if you use the free version... In Sweden, the main public TV channel has an "Open Archive" as they call it, where they publish older programs that everyone can see. I'm not too familiar with it, and I don't know how far back it goes. It also seems, upon reading the "About page", that the content is supposed to be dynamic, so you wouldn't be sure a material stays on forever. http://www.oppetarkiv.se/om-oppet-arkiv (perhaps you can google translate it?!). I will ask my colleagues what they are expecting form the trials. Didn't you and Steve talk about perhaps integrating a part of CIRCA quickly for the trials? What were your thoughts there? |
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@sancarder - yes, its dynamic nature is one of the problems with using remote content. I would hope that official channels of well-known organisations on YouTube would provide relatively stable links (since they would upset a lot of users if they changed their links every week), but of course there is no way to guarantee stability. And, indeed, non-stability seems to be a feature of the SVT Open Archive!: "The total supply will reduce to some extent and some titles will be out for a shorter time. Some of the programs [that] disappear can come back later." (I don't think it is just Google Translate that makes that sound odd! I wonder why they don't want to provide more stable content?) Yes, Steve and I have talked about integrating a minimal version of CIRCA into Brian. Perhaps I should have said above that a fully functional version of CIRCA is extremely unlikely by March. It would even be difficult to modify the current stand-alone version of CIRCA to have a Swedish interface and Swedish media content, since the system files (at least, the ones that I've seen) are compiled sources and use proprietary media file formats. (These difficulties should perhaps should have been recognised at the beginning of IN LIFE, or earlier, but they weren't. In the project proposal CIRCA is given the maximum technology readiness level, I think, which in some sense is correct, because it has been marketed commercially; however, the problem is that it is not ready for IN LIFE - or maybe IN LIFE is not ready for CIRCA :-) Anyway, let us know what your plans are for the trials as soon as you know them, and we'll do our best to try to provide you with what you need. Another question - are you planning to use LIM too? |
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@stephenpotter - We'd like to try the conversation part in CIRCA with a general content (but we only need a very small sample set for them to get the idea), and we'd like to see it integrated in Brian. We're not planning on testing LIM. Of course we'd like to try something sooner than later, but we feel that it's better that you and Arlene are clear about what categories and content it will have, so that we don't waste time translating something that isn't going to be used later. But it's much better that we start trialling with what we have, than waiting for the "perfect" implementation until it is too late :) |
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@stephenpotter - What do you think of the above? Will there be anything to trial during March? I see now that my collegaues have booked meeting with our target group users, and they of course are asking about what they could show them. What can I tell them - both in terms of the CIRCA component, whether integrated in Brian or not, and for the Brian part @SteveALee ? |
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@sancarder - I think your ideas sound sensible, and we certainly shouldn't wait for the "perfect" implementation of CIRCA - that's likely to be a long way away! But it's really difficult for me to say whether we will have a version for you to use in your trials by next month. At the moment, the only thing that I really have is the existing version of CIRCA, the same version that you have. I've begun work on the new version, but it's really still at the first stages (I've been designing the system database, etc). As for integrating it with Brian - that is, of course, dependent on the progress that @SteveALee is able to make, and then we would have to design some sensible way to incorporate CIRCA functionality into Brian. It's not impossible that there might be a 'good enough' version of CIRCA for you to trial by, say, mid-March; it will be easier to say by the end of next week whether this is a possibility. I'm sorry that this is not more definite, but I'm really not sure! What is the aim - in the sense of a research question - of your March trials? Are they dependent on having CIRCA? (I've just been given the contact details of the original developers, and have asked them whether there is any easy way to 'repurpose' the existing CIRCA for another country.) |
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Thanks, @stephenpotter - I have spoken to my colleagues and asked them about the trials. They want to test it just by putting CIRCA in front of the participants and observe how they interact with it - that is, making conversation with a conversation partner. So what they will need is something that lets them do that, with a set of content - that could be much smaller than the old CIRCA, but there has to be something :) Does that make anything clearer for you in terms of time frames? We could trial CIRCA in the next steps of trials, so mid-March does sound good! In the meantime, we might need some mockups. I was thinking I could do some kind of mockup in the software Steve showed me - it's a great tool and I think I could simulate CIRCA in there, albeit of course with a smaller set of content :) |
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@sancarder - I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it does have implications! And remember this version of CIRCA is still very much a prototype, so any suggestions or other feedback is welcome. (Actually I think it is a valid question whether "more local" content (an old photograph of the town I grew up in, or even of the street or house where I used to live) is "more evocative" of these sort of sociable memories than generic pictures of movie stars or famous events.) |
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Stephen, I discussed this with the team, and we agree that it’s no reason to go ”too local” in CIRCA. We’ll skip the regional part altogether for now (we might revisit later, one never knows!), and use CIRCA for more national content. The more personalized stuff we can put into Steve’s part instead. Have you heard anything from the University regarding the access…? Sandra Derbring Från: stephenpotter [mailto:notifications@github.com] @sancarderhttps://github.com/sancarder - I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it does have implications! And remember this version of CIRCA is still very much a prototype, so any suggestions or other feedback is welcome. (Actually I think it is a valid question whether "more local" content (an old photograph of the town I grew up in, or even of the street or house were I used to live) is "more evocative" of these sort of sociable memories than more generic pictures of movie stars or famous events.) — |
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@sancarder - okay, that makes things easier for now - and I'm sure there will be a number of things that you will want changing when you've had a chance to try the system. I have had the usual email exchanges with University Computing Support ("What do you want? Why do you want that? Are you sure you want that? Don't you want this instead?...."), but things are slowly moving forward...maybe tomorrow... |
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Knowing my team, I'm inclined to give you right on the above :) I feel you regarding corresponding with IT support. Did you have any luck 2016-03-09 19:20 GMT+01:00 stephenpotter notifications@github.com:
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@stephenpotter if you can manage with only FTP access for PHP and MySQL then I can give you access to space on opendirective.net. Or I'm about to setup some VPS hosting for Brian which would give you full SSH access. |
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@sancarder - no, no progress yesterday, not even a response to my emails. While I'm waiting I'll try to upload more media to the system - it will take longer than writing the code, I think! @SteveALee - thanks for the offer: let's see whether anything happens today, and if not then we can discuss alternative hosting plans. (By the way, I saw your Skype replies only last night - no, there was nothing in particular I wanted to discuss, thanks, I just thought I would join in if the meeting was going ahead.) |
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@stephenpotter - Hi Stephen! I hope you saw my email earlier - great work on the web version! It looks excellent! I have tried to localise some content and it seems to work very good! I got a question from Anna regarding our local film content - do you want us to provide YouTube clips in Swedish? How will it work if the user runs the app - is WiFi connection then required to run the videos, or is the content somehow downloaded locally? I found this site - what do you think of it? I have to run it by the experts regarding content, but if they find it useful, would it be possible for you to use the content technically? http://www.filmarkivet.se/sv/English/ |
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@sancarder - Hi, yes, I've seen your email - thanks for your feedback. At the moment there are two choices for film content - you can supply a YouTube reference or you can upload a movie file. I'm not really sure which is best: links to YouTube videos from official channels would seem to avoid copyright issues, but come with advertisements, and at the end suggest related videos (which may not be a bad thing, although the suggestions are not controlled by us). On the other hand, movie file formats are often only supported by particular platforms/browsers, but if you have specific movies that you know that you're going to use with a specific device (and can test things in advance), then this might be a better choice (assuming that there are no copyright issues, of course). As for WiFi connection - yes, this is necessary, not only for videos but for all media items, since they are now stored centrally on the server here. This is both a strength and a weakness of web-CIRCA: a strength because there is a single place where we can add (and remove) items and by doing so make them instantly available to all users; and a weakness because (unlike old-CIRCA) the system is not self-contained, and does require a 'good' internet connection. The content on the Filmarkivet site looks as though it might be useful, but it doesn't seem like they facilitate or encourage the embedding of videos in external sites (unlike YouTube, which encourages this), in which case all that we can do is link to the relevant web-page, which means leaving the CIRCA site. But that might be acceptable if it means that we have access to appropriate content. |
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@stephenpotter - Hi Stephen! I've been working tonight with adding media items in CIRCA, and I have two questions:
Otherwise, it looks really great - the images this large are very good! - and it's easy to work with! |
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@stephenpotter - Oh, yes, the reset function is working very well :) My vgregion mail program had some issues on Wednesday, so I wasn't sure I would be able to retrieve my reset password, and that's why I created another profile on my gmail address. I don't need it - you can remove it so there is no confusion! I talked to Anna yesterday and she explained about the authorization of the media files, that's fine! I will go in and check later if I can see my new items when running the program! |
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@sancarder - does that mean that you're still having to reset your password every time? That's not very friendly! Do you have any 'unusual' characters in your password (e.g., Swedish non-English characters?) I might have made a mistake with the database encoding. |
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@stephenpotter - Yes, that's right, resetting every time :) I have a password with lowercase and uppercase letters and numbers, but no non-English ones, so there shouldn't be the issue. |
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@stephenpotter - Stephen, something else I discovered when I added items yesterday, was that the field for "time" was mandatory. How are you planning to use it? Some of the picture I just don't the timestamp for, but could perhaps look up - but there will probably be some more generic pictures that doesn't really belong to a specific time, Would it be possible to not have this field mandatory? I also discovered that there seems to be a size limit (or this is my interpretation of what happened), because I got error when uploading some files. Is there a limit? Could it be increased, or should we follow that, and make our images smaller? |
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@sancarder - the time period field is something that I added because I feel it may be useful to help filter material for different populations (it wasn't something that was in the original CIRCA). I made it mandatory because these things are only useful if you have reasonably complete values, but at the moment it isn't being used at all, so I can relax that restriction. The maximum size for file uploads is (or should be) currently set to 10M - how big were your files? And I'm still thinking about your password problem... |
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@stephenpotter - It must have been some other kind of issue, because I tried again now and had success with all of the pictures that didn't work yesterday. So the size limits seems to be okay after all! :) |
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@sancarder - ah, good, that's at least one problem solved without me having to do anything! |
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@stephenpotter - I solved the issue with the password. It's regrettably enough totally a case of "if everything fails, read the instructions...". Turns out I was supposed to fill in my user name, and not my email address at login... But to look at it from the bright side - another problem solved without you having to do anything! :) My colleauge Margret Buchholz have also now registred as a user. She's about to show the system tomorrow at a "open lecture day" we have here at our center, so she would very much like access. Could we also ask you not to mess around too much with the system between 4pm and 6 pm (our time), and also Thursday between 10pm and 12 pm? That's when we'll show it to potential users. |
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@sancarder - Ah, that explains the password problem! I hadn't forgotten about it, I simply couldn't think why you would be having problems when nobody else seemed to, and your entry in the user table of the database looks much the same as everyone else's. Maybe if I just wait long enough, all problems eventually solve themselves... :-) I've now authorised Margret's account, so she should be able to log in to the system now. It would be useful if she familiarises herself with the interface (both the 'original' and 'simplified' versions) before giving the demo. I'll do all I can to make sure that the system is up and stable during those times. She is currently just a 'user' - does she need 'media administrator' access to show the media management features as well? And does "messing around" with the system = "agile software development"? :-) |
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Thank you @stephenpotter! Margret has tried the system and been able to login successfully, and has navigated the system. She does not need any administrator access, so everything's just fine! ... and yes, I would think that the messing and the agile development absolutely corresponds! :) Just a fancier name! |
@sancarder - I think you have put your finger on it there! Meanwhile I'm |
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@SteveALee - Glad to be of help! :) How's it going...? @stephenpotter - I've been adding a lot to CIRCA tonight, also localised some of your content and tried the simplified version. It looks really great! I saw that Anna had made some comments, I will chip in a little more tomorrow in that thread so that everyone can join in! |
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@sancarder - wow, a lot of content added (and now all authorised for viewing) - that must have taken you some time to collect and upload (and I assume that you have copyright clearance for all items, right? :-) |
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@stephenpotter – Luckily, I’m not in charge of collecting the stuff, I’m just uploading! So Anna and Christina did all the hard work. I think the pics are almost all from Wikimedia or other free sources. Yes, now you have the possibility to delve into our rich Swedish culture – just enjoy! ☺ Sandra Derbring Från: stephenpotter [mailto:notifications@github.com] @sancarderhttps://github.com/sancarder - wow, a lot of content added (and now all authorised for viewing) - that must have taken you some time to collect and upload (and I assume that you have copyright clearance for all items, right? :-) — |
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@sancarder - yes, it's interesting: life in Sweden looks the same as life in Britain, but different...! |
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@stephenpotter @sancarder Congratulation on the progress with CIRCA! Given the problems and delays I've experienced it's good you have a solution As it looks like plan B of Brian support for CIRCA are no longer needed I'm closing this issue and any related. But please feel free to add more. I'm very happy for you to use this space and gitter for CIRCA discussions if that is useful as there features are very close to Brian's |
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@SteveALee - sorry, we do seem to have hijacked this thread somewhat! And yes, progress with CIRCA has gone better than expected. Unfortunately, in concentrating on CIRCA I haven't really been paying attention to developments with Brian, but it sounds like your progress has been less smooth. Can I help with anything, bearing in mind my limited skill set? (I had a brief lunch-time chat with Peter the other day who mentioned that there was another project here that was interested in using Maavis/Brian, but I haven't had the follow-up conversation yet, so I don't know too much more about it. Watch this space.) |
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Not a problem at all :) I'll keep you in mind. I feel like I have finally turned a corner. I think you mean the Cloudcast project? It would be good if you you make contact and see how we can work together. |
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No, it's not the Cloudcast project (I am aware of Cloudcast but I didn't know that they had plans to use Maavis/Brian - Jochen, the technical guy on that project, seems to know his stuff, and I can help if any liaison is required). No, I'm not sure which project I'm talking about (!), nor even if it has a name yet... |
Brian's features are very close to those of the CIRCA project and only requires the ability to randomly select media from a subset defined by topics.
@OpenDirective/brian-collaborators
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