Collaboration – Solvitor

Following is a summary of my lightning talk on Annotum2Go at the August WordPress DC meetup.

Annotum Theme

Open-source WordPress theme for open access scientific publishing

Supports the National Library of Medicine’s XML Journal Article Tag Suite, aka JATS-XML.
Rich editing (equations, figures, references), workflow/approval, and multi-author collaboration.
Successor to Google Knol
Available on WordPress.com, .org
Widely used – 200k downloads to date
PLoS Currents: http://currents.plos.org/genomictests/
More information: http://annotum.org

Annotum stand-alone use cases

Individual users creating articles: http://annotum.org/system-vision-and-use-cases/ (i.e., using Annotum like MS-Word to create JATS-XML documents)
Development environment while traveling or otherwise offline

Server2Go

Stand-alone WAMP stack

Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP

Runs from disk, USB, CD
Open-source and free
Easily configurable

Important: be sure to set Server2Go to save changes (i.e., non-CD mode) as described here.

http://www.server2go-web.de/ [Donationware]

Annotum2Go

Pre-configured Annotum runtime environment
Custom icon, splash screen (‘gold’ level support from Server2Go)
Distributed with FireFox Portable for use in “IE-only” environments e.g Government offices
Installs and runs without admin privileges in most cases
Completely stand-alone – no internet connection required.
Tip: to allow your Annotum2Go (or Server2Go) setup to send mail, install Mercury Mail (and see the instructions in this Gist).
Download Annotum2Go: https://github.com/Annotum/Annotum/wiki/Downloads

IMPORTANT: This distribution is intended for personal use on a local system only. It has not been checked for security or stability on servers or on systems accessible from the Internet.

Other Platforms

Running a Mac? a Mac version of Annotum2Go available on the Annotum wiki download page (uses MAMP)

Running a Chromebook? Check out this article on installing a LAMP stack on ChromeOS.

No computer (just a browser)? Check out Koding for a free Linux VM in the cloud with in-browser editing and shell access.

Annotum2Go Demo

Download, unzip and run. That’s it!

Annotum is a product of Solvitor LLC with heavy lifting by Crowd Favorite.

Special thanks to: Google, PLoS, NIH/NLM/NCBI, and Automattic.

Annotum is free (speech and beer).

Contact Carl @gcto on twitter or via http://solvitor.com/contact

We use Skype for instant messaging, cheap voice calls including very reasonable rates for international calls, and video conferencing. I've long been a fan of face-to-face communication as I think you lose something from email-only interactions. And while phone calls are a step up from text-only media such as email and IM, there's no replacement for the visual cues and context that video can provide. In-person meetings are better still, but the logistics and costs of meeting frequently in the same physical location can be prohibitive for geographically-distributed teams.

In the past, I've used Tandberg video units, which are easy to use, relatively simple to set up and function very well, but their cost is extremely high — list price almost USD 3k for the least expensive unit! With Skype and a good camera like the Microsoft LifeCam HD Cinema (about $50 with noise-cancelling microphone and true 720p HD quality), you can have a great video-conferencing setup for 5% of the cost of the cheapest Tandberg.