Latest two examples - limitless possibilities truly means limitless work!

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_garberi_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_aurea_species.htm

Thanks for the input on/off line, Tim

Chuck Bargeron wrote:

Here is an example of using Google Maps API for point distribution data: http://www.evergladescisma.org/species/subinfo.cfm?sub=2783

See bottom of the page.

We are implementing this technique across the Southeast U.S.

If anyone has questions about using Google Maps API, please let me know and I will be glad to help.

Chuck Bargeron, Technology Coordinator and Webmaster Certified Macromedia ColdFusion MX Developer The Bugwood Network and ForestryImages.org P. O. Box 748 4601 Research Way Admin. Bldg. The University of Georgia Tifton, GA 31793 USA

Email: cbargero@uga.edu mailto:cbargero@uga.edu Phone: 229-386-3298 FAX: 229-386-3352 Web: www.bugwood.org www.forestryimages.org

*From:* tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] *On Behalf Of *Rebecca Shapley *Sent:* Wednesday, August 15, 2007 6:05 PM *To:* Timothy M. Jones *Cc:* tdwg@lists.tdwg.org *Subject:* Re: [tdwg] Species pages and video

Great to see map information with the species, and using Google Earth is exciting.

It would be nice if some representation or preview of the map appeared right on the page... worth taking a look at the Google Maps API. Helps you know if it's worth the extra click & switching to the other app. Also, did you know that KMLs will show up on maps.google.com http://maps.google.com too? It's called "kml on maps" - might help with what you're looking for.

Best,

-Rebecca Shapley

On 8/10/07, *Timothy M. Jones* <tpolonski@adelphia.net mailto:tpolonski@adelphia.net> wrote:

Hello,

I will not be attending the meeting this fall but thought that this may be of interest to those interested in species pages models. I am working on species pages that include the use of video. The videos were only added a month ago and are a bit rudimentary (with budget-conscious equipment) but the potential now seems truly limitless.

Examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_nebrascensis_species.htm http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_nebrascensis_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_mitchelliana_species.htm

Comments appreciated, Timothy M. Jones http://utc.usu.edu/keys/Carex/Carex.html _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org mailto:tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

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Dear all,

this idea has clearly occurred to several of us.

You may also have seen in the latest EDIT newsletter http://www.e-taxonomy.eu/news.php?optimurl=Newsletter--4 an article describing 'Scratchpads'. These are web sites that EDIT are making available to foster collaboration between taxonomists. More than twenty communities are already using their Scratchpad to share, manage and integrate taxonomic data on the web.

The import and display of spatial data using a Google Maps API is used as an example of 'custom data' and there is a screencast to show you how its done.

We would like to encourage people to take advantage of these sites, either by collaborating with an existing site or by starting a new one. A little technical skill is required to manage a site, but we provide an extensive collection of videos to help users get started http://www.editwebrevisions.info/help).

The system to support these sites is based at the Natural History Museum in London, but site content is owned and managed by the communities that created them. The NHML will support the server for the foreseeable future, certainly beyond the life of the EDIT project itself.

To learn more, direct your colleagues to: http:// www.editwebrevisions.info/scratchpads

Take a look at the current sites: http://www.editwebrevisions.info/SiteList

Or try a demonstration: http://sandbox.editwebrevisions.info/

Finally, there will be several talks about EDIT in Bratislava and there are two discussing these scratchpads in particular.

Cheers, Dave Roberts -- On 15 Aug 2007, at 23:05, Rebecca Shapley wrote:

Great to see map information with the species, and using Google Earth is exciting.

It would be nice if some representation or preview of the map appeared right on the page... worth taking a look at the Google Maps API. Helps you know if it's worth the extra click & switching to the other app. Also, did you know that KMLs will show up on maps.google.com too? It's called "kml on maps" - might help with what you're looking for.

Best,

-Rebecca Shapley

On 8/10/07, Timothy M. Jones tpolonski@adelphia.net wrote:

...

Hello,

I will not be attending the meeting this fall but thought that this may be of interest to those interested in species pages models. I am working on species pages that include the use of video. The videos were only added a month ago and are a bit rudimentary (with budget-conscious equipment) but the potential now seems truly limitless.

Examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/ carex_nebrascensis_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/ carex_mitchelliana_species.htm

Comments appreciated, Timothy M. Jones http://utc.usu.edu/keys/Carex/Carex.html _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

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Species pages update - All issues with the exception of the kml running in Google maps have been addressed. Mapping now includes a Google map listed by GBIF contributor and a Google Earth map that lists all current GBIF data (click-able for more info). Map examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_aurea_range.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_range.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_folliculata_range.htm

[David Shorthouse wrote:] Careful. More than ~200 pushpins causes issues with client browser memory overload, i.e. can freeze or crash browsers, especially older versions of IE. If you want all those markers, you'll have to investigate clustering.

Any thoughts on how to deal with problem? Will this problem still be here three years from now?

[David Shorthouse wrote:] I'd say it'll be worse. As developers, we'll have to start thinking about handhelds and iPhones.

David P. Shorthouse ------------------------------------------------------ Department of Biological Sciences CW-403, Biological Sciences Centre University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9 mailto:dps1@ualberta.ca http://canadianarachnology.webhop.net http://arachnidforum.webhop.net http://www.spiderwebwatch.org ------------------------------------------------------

Dear Wouter

Thanks for this link. From a scientific literature point of view, this demonstrates very nicely the absurdity of how we deal with scientific literature: At the bottom, there is a link to description, and the link goes to Wikipedia: This is fine in itself, but it questions why we bother to go through writing scientific publications describing species. You bother to have links to scientific names, and then in the next section one on commons names: here you care, but you do not make the same for species descriptions.

Donat

_____

From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Wouter Addink Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 12:38 PM To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg] Species pages and video

Just another example...

http://www.nlbif.nl/species_details.php?name=Pluvialis%20apricaria http://www.nlbif.nl/species_details.php?name=Pluvialis%20apricaria&tab=2 &tab=2 http://www.nlbif.nl/species_details.php?name=Angophora%20costata&tab=1

Wouter Addink

----- Original Message -----

From: Rebecca Shapley mailto:rebecca@akodon.com

To: Timothy M. mailto:tpolonski@adelphia.net Jones

Cc: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org

Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 12:05 AM

Subject: Re: [tdwg] Species pages and video

Great to see map information with the species, and using Google Earth is exciting.

It would be nice if some representation or preview of the map appeared right on the page... worth taking a look at the Google Maps API. Helps you know if it's worth the extra click & switching to the other app. Also, did you know that KMLs will show up on maps.google.com too? It's called "kml on maps" - might help with what you're looking for.

Best,

-Rebecca Shapley

On 8/10/07, Timothy M. Jones tpolonski@adelphia.net wrote:

Hello,

I will not be attending the meeting this fall but thought that this may be of interest to those interested in species pages models. I am working on species pages that include the use of video. The videos were only added a month ago and are a bit rudimentary (with budget-conscious equipment) but the potential now seems truly limitless.

Examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_nebrascensis_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_mitchelliana_species.htm

Comments appreciated, Timothy M. Jones http://utc.usu.edu/keys/Carex/Carex.html _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org mailto:tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

_____

_______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

I used Google Earth to visualize some GBIF data for our new portal rollout in July

Sharks and Rays of South Africa links occurrence data to taxon- related icons so that you get some notion of what all these data actually refer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-u3VWd6hVo

I also used it to visualize migration patterns of barn swallows and distribution of hummingbird data but this is a bit of a longer video with Google Earth only at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gofvjCbSkaE

David Remsen

Great to see map information with the species, and using Google Earth is exciting.

It would be nice if some representation or preview of the map appeared right on the page... worth taking a look at the Google Maps API. Helps you know if it's worth the extra click & switching to the other app. Also, did you know that KMLs will show up on maps.google.com too? It's called "kml on maps" - might help with what you're looking for.

Best,

-Rebecca Shapley

On 8/10/07, Timothy M. Jones tpolonski@adelphia.net wrote: Hello,

I will not be attending the meeting this fall but thought that this may be of interest to those interested in species pages models. I am working on species pages that include the use of video. The videos were only added a month ago and are a bit rudimentary (with budget-conscious equipment) but the potential now seems truly limitless.

Examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/ carex_nebrascensis_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/ carex_mitchelliana_species.htm

Comments appreciated, Timothy M. Jones http://utc.usu.edu/keys/Carex/Carex.html _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

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Dear all,

I’ve been meaning to jump in on this conversation several times, but I keep getting side-tracked.

For over two years now, we have been developing a protocol and associated software tools (I use the pronoun "we" loosely as far as the software development goes -- that has been entirely the work of Rob Whitton) to allow us to harness the power of video for our scientific purposes. We conduct surveys of coral-reef fishes in the Pacific, and the use of hi-definition underwater video cameras allow us to make dozens of "video vouchers" (as we call them) of fish species in the context of their natural habitat on every single dive (again, I use the pronoun "we" loosely, as John Earle is the primary videographer on our surveys). Though perhaps not as ideal as specimens, the video is much better than in-situ still photos (especially at hi-def resolution), because it gives us multiple angles on the subject (increasing the probability of capturing that elusive but diagnostic small black spot near the anus), as well as behavior (which can sometimes aid in confirming identifications). And it’s a LOT better than just an un-imaged observation record. It also allows us to document many more species on a given dive than we could by collecting alone.

The software that Rob Whitton has developed is optimized for field-based capturing of metadata. We (i.e., John) will generally catalog the video clips on the same day the video was taken. Metadata is robust, with full locality/habitat data (including depth and other parameters), as well as rich content cataloging (multiple identifications of the same imaged organism, etc.) At the moment, we (i.e., John & Rob) have something on the order of 7,000 video clips cataloged -- representing nearly a terabyte of video files (a mix of both standard-resolution DV and HDV). Very soon we will have an initial website online to allow searching/etc., and we have a couple of major regional checklists in the works that will cite these "video vouchers" in addition to more traditional means of documenting species at localities.

So...the reason I am posting this now (rather than wait until the site is online) is to ask others who are exploring the use of video content for similar purposes how they plan to implement it.

Our current plan is to maintain an archive of full-resolution digital video files on our local SAN, but the files are much too large to stream in real-time over almost any typical internet connection, and moreover would completely choke our bandwidth if the site ever became popular. For this reason, we want to use a video hosting service to stream the content, which we will link to from our own web databases (which themselves will serve only keyframes from the clips).

We’ve been working with Google to sort out a way to do batch uploads onto Google Video. I generally prefer the Google Video environment over YouTube, but I’m not familiar with other video hosting services that are out there.

Here is a sample clip:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=153611051098248174

Google Video allows me to dump all of the metadata into the Description field. Unfortunately, this is not very structured. However, Google Video allows you to link back to your own web page for each clip, so I can have that link go to an LSID resolver, or some other web interface where more structured metadata can be served. Another feature I like is that you can lay as many subtitle/caption files as you want. For example, if you go to the link above, in the lower right corner you’ll see a little "CC" icon. Click on the drop-down button to the right of the "CC" button, and you can choose from any number of subtitle tracks. In the example above, there are two different tracks: "Audio Dialog" transcribes the spoken words you hear on the clip's soundtrack, and "Species List", which names the species as they appear in the clip. Rob Whitton is developing his software to automatically generate the text for the metadata and multiple CC tracks, so that we can (eventually) automate the upload process.

The main problem -- which I think will be true of any of these video hosting services -- is the limited resoloution of the clips as they are streamed. For example, here is a frame from the original HDV clip in the above link:

http://www2.bishopmuseum.org/testvideo/Frame01.jpg

Here is the same frame at the resolution that the video is rendered on Google Video:

http://www2.bishopmuseum.org/testvideo/Frame02.jpg

Obviously, the full-resolution video contains a LOT more information. The problem is that an MPG (i.e., compressed) copy of the full-resolution HDV clip is 172MB, whereas the compressed version that Google streams is 3.5MB. The problem is not with Google Video -- it's with the internet. Most people will not have access to the badwidth necessary to stream video at the full HDV resolution.

So...what we'd like is a service that will allow people to view the clips at a resolution that is reasonable to stream over the internet (Google Video, YouTube, etc.), but then have the option of downloading the full-resolution file (in this case, 178MB) if they want to see it on their own computer, and are willing to wait for the full download. Obviously, we'll have to somehow regulate the downloading so that we don't choke our bandwidth -- but we want to allow people to have access to the full-resolution imagery.

My hope is that Google (or whoever) itself would offer the service of streaming content at an appropriate resolution, but then allowing people to download the full resolution clip as a file, if they want (i.e., using Google's or whoever's bandwidth, and not ours). But for the time being, we mostly see Google as a way to: 1) Manage streaming of video content at low resolution, and 2) increase visibility (through Google searches_ of the content we do have.

Of course, the latter depends heavily on how well the metadata are fleshed out and structured -- which brings me back to Éamonn's post. Like him, I am very-much looking forward to conversations at the upcoming meeting in Bratislava.

Meanwhile, I guess the main point of this message is to ask whether others know of analagous projects, and how they have dealt with issues of bandwidth, bulk uploading to video hosting services, and metadata structure and content.

Aloha, Rich

Richard L. Pyle, PhD Database Coordinator for Natural Sciences and Associate Zoologist in Ichthyology Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum 1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817 Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252 email: deepreef@bishopmuseum.org http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/staff/pylerichard.html

-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Eamonn O Tuama Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 5:20 AM To: 'Timothy M. Jones'; tdwg@lists.tdwg.org Subject: RE: [tdwg] Species pages and video

Dear Timothy,

I think the use of video is valuable even if there is not much motion involved - combining a series of stills with voice over can be very effective - and the many video hosting services makes it relatively easy to get online. However, unlike text which can be mined for information, video (and images) require good metadata to describe what the content is about - to aid in searches, etc.

Your species pages with their general facts and interactive taxonomic keys span the task areas covered by SDD (Structure of Descriptive Data) and SPM (Species Profile Model) TDWG interest groups. I look forward to fruitful discussions between the two at the forthcoming meeting in Bratislava that will lead to standardised ways of marking up your species content so that it is more easily discoverable, accessible and re-usable (assuming permissions granted) across what GBIF has labelled "The Universal Biodiversity Data Bus".

Best regards,

Éamonn

-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Timothy M. Jones Sent: 10 August 2007 16:48 To: tdwg@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg] Species pages and video

Hello,

I will not be attending the meeting this fall but thought that this may be of interest to those interested in species pages models. I am working on species pages that include the use of video. The videos were only added a month ago and are a bit rudimentary (with budget-conscious equipment) but the potential now seems truly limitless.

Examples - http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_eburnea_species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_nebrascensis_ species.htm

http://utc.usu.edu/factsheets/CarexFSF/new/carex_mitchelliana_ species.htm

Comments appreciated, Timothy M. Jones http://utc.usu.edu/keys/Carex/Carex.html _______________________________________________ tdwg mailing list tdwg@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg

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