Dev8D Bounties

Mar 3, 2011 by kirsty-pitkin

There were prizes galore awarded at this year’s Dev8D. Here is the 2011 hall of fame:

The Elsevier Web 2.0 Apps for Science Challenge

Elsevier challenged developers to produce an OpenSocial gadget using JavaScript for SciVerse. The gadget could use the SciVerse content and framework APIs, or open APIs and data.

The winner was Sam Adams, who produced a Search Assistant tool. He described his submission as “a simple JavaScript API making it easy to perform SciVerse searches” which he presented with some example applications. He noted that the same approach could be taken to simplifying the content API. You can find this project at Bitbucket.

Second place went to Bharti Gupta and Yogesh Patel, who produced OpenGadget, an application which finds causes and related information for the health problems with a geo-spatial perspective.

Third place went to Cass Johnston and Sander Van der Waal, who produced AweSomeThing. This uses the SciVerse data with Google’s mapping and visualisation tools to generate author profiles with information and visualisations of publications, collaborators, location, citations etc. You can find the code at Github.

The Picture This! Challenge

This challenge required developers to focus on how image metadata can best be used to deliver the services that real, front-line web services such as repositories, on-line image stores etc need to offer their users.

The winners were Robert Baker and Roger Greenhaigh for their Creative Commons Images tool. This tool adds creative commons logo and copyright info from embedded metadata into a source image to provide copyright attribution. They provided a write up about their project on the Dev8D Wiki.

Second Place went to Bharti Gupta, who produced a tool for embedding metadata in geo-spatial images. This included geo-coordinates, acquisition dates and license info. Further details about this project are available at the Ideas Swap Shop.

The Molly Project Challenge

This prize went to the most significant/useful/novel contribution to the Molly Project by the end of Dev8D. There were two submissions, which the judges deemed to be equal in merit, and so awarded joint first place to John Harrison for his SRU Provider and Demo App, and to Giuseppe Sollazzo for his Install Wiki for CentOS 5.5.

The PIMS Mobile Data/API Challenge

This the prize for this challenge was awarded for the best mobile application that uses JISC’s API to its ‘Programme Information Management System’ (PIMS).

The winner was Mike Jones for his project: Mobile PIMS. This was a native iPhone application to browse project information. Mike produced a screencast to demonstrate this application in more detail.

Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Bibliographic Data Challenge

Announced in advance of the event, this challenge asked developers: What can you do with open access to data? What great ideas do you have for utilising open access to bibliographic catalogues? Or what example prototypes can you come up with?

The award went to Damian Steer, who created a sparql end point to join bibliographic data to University of Bristol researcher data. He wrote a blog post explaining the development of this project in more detail.

Open Planets Foundation Challenge

This challenge was to improve the coverage and quality of the signature files for Fido. The developers were invited to create or update format signatures, and to ensure the specified quality of required information, embedding a peer review process where a second developer has to sign-off on the new
format record.

The winner was Bill Ray, who produced a plan for a GUI of FIDO and python version of FIDO, and a stand alone FIDO propsal, App Engine, Python GUI standsalone proposal. You can find his code at Github.

Enabling Integrated Learning Environments (EILE) Project Challenge (JISC Funded)

This challenge required developers to build a menu linking Full LTI provider to work with the EILE Moodle consumer.

The winner was Michael Aherne from the University of Strathclyde, who converted PMWiki, an open source wiki tool, in to a Full LTI Provider based on the EILE WordPress integration. The tool registers and launches, using the LTI information to control edit access and auto create basic content seamlessly. Michael provided a screencast of the tool and made his code available at Github.

EILE Surprise Challenge

Attendees were challenged to investigate the functionality provided by the full LTI specification and present a low-fidelity prototype of an exciting LTI provider idea.

The winners were Monica Duke and Julian Cheal from UKOLN, who created a project to integrate repository data into VLEs. The idea behind this is to offer a lecturer interface so that they can search the collection, pick specific results and use them to build a list that can then be associated with a module inside the VLE. For the student view the list recommended by the lecturer will be presented as being relevant to a study module.