Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA

[SteveALee]

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

[stephenpotter]

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?).

[SteveALee]

It's slightly more complicated than this

I bet. That was just my ignorant "starter for 10". Thanks for the update and clarification.

[stephenpotter]

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!

[SteveALee]

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.

[sancarder]

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

[stephenpotter]

And there's a video demonstrating CIRCA on this page: http://www.circaconnect.co.uk/circa.html (Sorry, Steve, I'd assumed that you had already seen CIRCA.)

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.)

[SteveALee]

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

[stephenpotter]

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...

[sancarder]

I agree, @stephenpotter, it clearly shows the need for localisation! I have got CIRCA up and running on a laptop PC with Windows 7, but not on any Windows 8 machine I have tried. I use it with a mouse. I have tried to access the source code, but from what I can see, it's not possible since it's written in Adobe Director as Stephen says.

[SteveALee]

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]

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

[sancarder]

Nice! Then it will be a bit easier for you to see for yourself!

[sancarder]

@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?

[stephenpotter]

@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?

[stephenpotter]

@SteveALee - probably a silly question, but why did you need IE10 (or, indeed, any browser) to run CIRCA in your virtual machine?

[SteveALee]

@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

• Install VirtualBox
• Install the Windows VM
• Unzip and double click on the appliance (.ova) file to open it in VirtualBox
• install and increase memory - I used 1 GB
• Share a folder from the VM to where CIRCA files are
• * Run VM
• Map a drive (Z:) to the network location of that folder in the VM (just in case CIRCA moans with UNC)
• Install QuickTime from CIRCA disto in Z:
• Run Circa in Z:

[sancarder]

@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? Categories in CIRCA.xlsx

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter Also, we'd like to begin starting the trials for CIRCA during the first half of March.

[stephenpotter]

@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. Your analysis looks right, although there are a number of different versions of CIRCA, which differ according to (some of) the categories and content - it looks like you're working with the Scottish version! To attempt to come up with a more standardised approach, I've been through the CIRCA files too, and I've tried to 'rationalise' the various categories to remove those that were location-specific ("Festival of Britain", "London Life"), those that seemed too similar to other categories, or else whose purpose (and contents) were not easy to describe. I attach a Word document with this information, as well as brief descriptions of the contents of each category. (There are also some technical details about the file formats, but these are not finalised yet - I'm trying to decide on the best way of doing things.) Arlene and Sarah have not approved my changes yet - understandably they're reluctant to change things that they consider to have been validated in previous user trials of CIRCA - but it's clear to me that some of the categories are less useful than others. CIRCA media categories.docx

[stephenpotter]

@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.

[stephenpotter]

@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. (Again, I've suggested this to Arlene and Sarah, and am waiting for a response. I suspect they will not like the advertisements. But it might be a way of quickly providing content for the trials.)

[sancarder]

@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?

[stephenpotter]

@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?

[sancarder]

@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 :)

[sancarder]

@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 ?

[stephenpotter]

@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.)

[sancarder]

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 :)

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - my early experiments at building a basic web CIRCA have gone quite well: there's still a lot of work to do, but I'm now more confident than I was last week that I should have something for you to use by mid-March! So, the next question is: do you think you will be able to find sufficient media content by then?

[SteveALee]

@stephenpotter so that seems to answer my question about if Brian needs to support circa features! Shall I remove the issues for this or shall we discuss on Weds?

[stephenpotter]

@SteveALee - it would be nice to still have a Plan B! Besides, it might be nice functionality to work into Brian anyway. (Unfortunately, I don't think that I'll be able to chat on Wednesday - I'm attending an all-day course.)

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter , @SteveALee - As I have thought about it, CIRCA would be an own module, but the "start page" has entries to both the CIRCA module and the Brian module. Isn't it technically possible to do a solution like that, where those two modules doesn't have to be integrated into each other, but just be reached from the same top level?

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter - That's sounds great! We have already begun to sift through content. I have made a mockup of CIRCA (attached). The plan is to also put images in there - but for videos and music, I'm not sure it's possible to link to those formats in Balsamiq (do you know, @SteveALee ? ) CIRCA-mockup.pdf

[SteveALee]

I'm not sure it's possible to link to those formats in Balsamiq

I do no think so. Certainly I've only seen Links to other pages in the pdf it creates.

Isn't it technically possible to do a solution like that, where those two modules doesn't have to be integrated into each other, but just be reached from the same top level?

I don't full understand, but yes. On another ticket I mentioned they might be completely different web apps with their own URL. We may then have a simple web page that links to them

it would be nice to still have a Plan B!

Ha, well of course. However times are tight. That said much of circa functionality will be in Brian, just not necessarily by mid March. We need to agree priorities

[sancarder]

I suspected it wouldn't work to link to external files like that. That's a bummer, but perhaps we could use it for only trialling with images at this point.

Yes, it could totally be different web apps, if there just is an interface that lets the users reach both of them. I think we mean the same thing here.

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - the mockup looks good - I hope the working version looks half as good!

@SteveALee - yes, of course you're right about prioritisation: let's assume that Brian and CIRCA are separate entities for now, and we can discuss integrating them as and when the need arises.

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - hello, how are you? An update on new web CIRCA: it is almost working, but needs a lot more testing. I hope to be able to host it on a web server here very soon so that you can begin to play with it (but the University is not giving me a great deal of support in this). Attached is an Excel spread sheet with the English names for the categories and other texts used in the system - could you provide suitable Swedish translations, please? Let me know if you don't understand the English terminology. Also, if you think that any of the categories is inappropriate for Sweden, then this is your chance to suggest changes!

Have you been able to find many media files yet? Many of the existing movies that I have from old CIRCA are in an old Quicktime format (I think that's what they are, .mov) that won't play without conversion, not even on a Mac. And the audio files seem to be .aif format, which works only in Safari browsers, as far as I can tell. But we always knew that the media and their formats were going to be a problem.... circa_translations.xlsx

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter - hi stephen - and thanks for this! Sound really good! I checked your document and it doesn't seem difficult to translate, but I have sent it forward to the people doing the trials if they want to have some input. Hopefully I'll be back with the Swedish vocabulary soon. They are also responsible for the media files, so I'll wait for the answer for that as well!

Sounds promising that the CIRCA web version is almost working! :) What does this version include?

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - the web version includes just about all of the functionality (I think) of CIRCA, but it is not quite as pretty to look at (I haven't included the images of the record player, or the old TV set, for example). I still need to test it on touch-screen devices and check that it is responsive to tablets and smaller screens. And using other browsers and operating systems. And with different types of media. And...and.... :-)

[SteveALee]

@sancarder @stephenpotter Good news about the HTML CIRCA. what technologies did you use in the end?

It will be little while till Brian is ready as plan B

[stephenpotter]

@SteveALee I've used mainly PHP with bits of Javascript and CSS, and a MySQL database. I'm using the Laravel framework for PHP, which seems quite powerful - and quick!

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter - Thank you so much for this, Stephen! I have now spoken to the others on the team, and we have translated the categories for you. A few of them, we might want to discuss a little bit further and come back to you with a revision, but you can use this list until then. We don't find any category unsuitable for Sweden, but we would like to be able to make a few additional categories/subcategories with more local material - is this possible?

When it comes to materials, we have some suggestions on how to get it, but we don't actually have a lot of it yet. We might have some photos I could send you (I'm just gonna confirm this with the others) - would it be possible to use the English materials also for the Swedish version until we have all our materials in place? Circa_translations_Sweden.xlsx

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - thanks for the list, I'll add them into the system; it's no problem to change them later. If I've coded it correctly (!) it should be relatively easy to add additional categories, although I think we would should then add equivalent/corresponding categories for all regions (eg. if you wanted to add "Swedish Life", there should also be a "British Life" category), otherwise things might get confusing (for me, at least).

Yes, I think that gathering the material is always going to be a problem. At the moment, I'm tending towards recommending using .jpgs for photographs, YouTube for videos, and .mp3s for music; the system should be flexible enough to cope with any formats, but the problem is often whether the user's browser will play the formats (e.g. the media from the old version of CIRCA that I've been using has music in .aif format and videos in (an older version of) Quicktime .mov format, both of which play in Safari on a Mac, but perhaps not in other browsers.... You can use UK media for the Swedish trials, but we'll need to give them Swedish titles (it takes time, but there is a web interface for doing this, just as there is an interface for uploading media).

Anyway, the system is 'nearly' available - I'm still making changes, but really I'm waiting for the University support to open up the ports to give external access to the server. You should then be able to try it, and let me know if it is good enough for your trials.

[sancarder]

@stephenpotter - Sounds great! Will it also work to have several subcategories for the local material, e.g. for Western Sweden, Southern Sweden etc., or even specific cities? We're only testing in two sites, so it won't be categories for all Swedish cities though :) Would that mean you would have to invent categories for British cities, or could it just be subcategories into a "Swedish Life" category?

I think we need time to gather more materials, so if possible, we'd very much like to use the British materials until we have something. Could you send us an Excel sheet with those words to translate? I think that would be more efficient, but if it's not possible, we perhaps will have to wait for the web interface (which sounds really good to have!).

We're excited to try it out, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that the ports will open soon! :)

[stephenpotter]

@sancarder - hmm, having different categories for different regions might require some thought (I know that was how CIRCA was originally made, but that was for one region only!). At the moment, the choice of what media to show is based on the user's locale (basically country + language) - there would need to be something else to distinguish Southern Swedish content from Western Swedish, if you don't want Southern Swedes seeing Western Swedish media and vice versa. (Although it nice to use CIRCA with local content, I think that going "too local" is probably a mistake because the difficulties of collecting media are then duplicated for each locality.)

[sancarder]

Thanks, Stephen – I take this to the team and see what they say about it!

---

Sandra Derbring Datalingvist, IT-tekniker Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset DART – Kommunikations- och dataresurscenter för personer med funktionsnedsättning Kruthusgatan 17, 411 04 Göteborg sandra.derbring@vgregion.semailto:sandra.derbring@vgregion.se www.dart-gbg.orghttp://www.dart-gbg.org/

Från: stephenpotter [mailto:notifications@github.com] Skickat: den 8 mars 2016 16:42 Till: OpenDirective/brian Kopia: sancarder Ämne: Re: [brian] Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA (#21)

@sancarderhttps://github.com/sancarder - hmm, having different categories for different regions might require some thought (I know that was how CIRCA was originally made, but that was for one region only!). At the moment, the choice of what media to show is based on the user's locale (basically country + language) - there would need to be something else to distinguish Southern Swedish content from Western Swedish, if you don't want Southern Swedes seeing Western Swedish media and vice versa. (Although it nice to use CIRCA with local content, I think that going "too local" is probably a mistake because the difficulties of collecting media are then duplicated for each locality.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/OpenDirective/brian/issues/21#issuecomment-193828611.

[stephenpotter]

@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.)

[sancarder]

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 Datalingvist, IT-tekniker Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset DART – Kommunikations- och dataresurscenter för personer med funktionsnedsättning Kruthusgatan 17, 411 04 Göteborg sandra.derbring@vgregion.semailto:sandra.derbring@vgregion.se www.dart-gbg.orghttp://www.dart-gbg.org/

Från: stephenpotter [mailto:notifications@github.com] Skickat: den 8 mars 2016 19:33 Till: OpenDirective/brian Kopia: sancarder Ämne: Re: [brian] Support features required for a HTML version of CIRCA (#21)

@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.)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/OpenDirective/brian/issues/21#issuecomment-193905071.

[stephenpotter]

@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...

[sancarder]

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 today?

2016-03-09 19:20 GMT+01:00 stephenpotter notifications@github.com:

@sancarder https://github.com/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...

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/OpenDirective/brian/issues/21#issuecomment-194434705.

[SteveALee]

@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.