What if data were accessible within the document itself?
Utopia Documents is a free PDF viewer which recognizes certain enhanced figures, and fetches the underlying data. This allows readers to view and experiment with the tables, graphs, molecular structures, and sequences in situ.
These screencasts were made from pages 9 and 10 of PDF of a paper by the Manchester-based Utopia team: T. K. Attwood, D. B. Kell, P. Mcdermott, J. Marsh, S. R. Pettifer, and D. Thorne. Calling international rescue: knowledge lost in literature and data landslide! Biochemical Journal, Dec 2009. doi:10.1042/BJ20091474.
“Utopia Documents links scientific research papers to the data and to the community. It enables publishers to enhance their publications with additional material, interactive graphs and models. It allow the reader to access a wealth of data resources directly from the paper they are viewing, makes private notes and start public conversations. It does all this on normal PDFs, and never alters the original file. We are targeting the PDF, since they still have around 80% readership over online viewing.
“Semantics, loose-coupling, fingerprinting and linked-data are the key ingredients. All the data is described using ontologies, and a plug-in system allows third parties to integrate their database or tool within a few lines of script. We use fingerprinting to allow us to recognise what paper a user is reading, and to spot duplicates. All annotations are held remotely, so that wherever you view a paper, the result is the same.”
I’d still like to see a demo of the commenting functionality.
I’d also be particularly interested in the publisher perspective, about the production work that goes into creating the enhancements. Portland Press’s October news announces that they’ve been promoting Utopia at the Charleston conference and SSP, with an upcoming appearance at the STM Innovations Seminar.
A post at HLit got me thinking about locative hypertexts, which are meant to be read in a particular place.
Monday, Liza Daly shared an epub demo which pulls in the reader’s location, and makes decisions about the character’s actions based on movement. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure novel crossed with a geo-aware travel guide. It’s a brief proof-of-concept, and the most exciting part is that the code is free for the taking under the very permissive (GPL + commercial-compatible) MIT License. Thanks, Liza and Threepress for lowering barriers to experimentation with ebooks!
‘Locative hypertexts’ also bring to mind GPS-based guidebooks as envisioned in the 2007 Editus video ‘Possible ou probable…?’1:
In the 9-minute video, we get mouth-watering, partly tongue-in-cheek scenes of continental Europe’s quality-of-life — fantastic trains & pedestrian streetscapes,independent bookstores, delicious food, world-class museums, weekend getaway to Bruges, etc.– as the movie follows a couple through a riotous few days of E-book high living.
On their fabulously svelte, Kindle 2-like devices, they
read and purchase novels
enjoy reading on the beach
get multimedia museum guides
navigate foreign cities with ease
stay in multimedia contact with friends and family
collaborate with colleagues on shared virtual desktops while at sidewalk cafes
see many hi-resolution Breughel paintings online and off that I’m dying to see myself
etc.
Multimedia guidebooks2 are approaching this vision. Combine them with (also-existing) turn-by-turn directions, and connectivity and privacy will be the largest remaining obstacles.
So then what about location-based storytelling? I got to thinking about the iPhone apps I’ve already encountered, which are intended for use in particular places:
Walking Cinema: Murder on Beacon Hill – a murder mystery/travel series based in Boston (available as an iPhone app and podcast).
Museum of the Phantom City: Other Futures – a multimedia map/alternate history of NYC architecture, described as a way to “see the city that could have been”. It maps never-built structures envisioned by Buckminster Fuller, Gaudi, and others – ideally while you’re “standing on the projects’ intended sites”.
Museum of London: Streetmuseum, true history of London in photos, meant for use on the streets
Historic Earth, has historical maps which could be interesting settings for historical locative storytelling
