Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Capstone Finalization

This is the final entry for my Capstone project.  It has been a really interesting project, and I am very excited about all of the things I have been able implement with the help of the SOA's Webmaster, Chris Rankin, and the Director, Elizabeth Schaub.  My project culminated in a 25-page Marketing Plan which illustrates in greater detail the technologies discussed below.

Status Update

The VRC's blog is ready for roll out.  We have installed Google Analytics to record site traffic, so that we have actual user statistics for the site and can evaluate which technologies are being utlized.  

A Swicki, which users can utilize to search a vetted list of the VRC's Web Resources links as well as the internet, has been added to the Web Resources pages.  The Swicki records user statistics.  Based on these statistics, we know that the Swicki is being used, and that is very exciting.

The next step is to license the Visual Thesaurus.  Users will be able to access the thesaurus from the catalog.  We hope that this will allow users to find alternative terms when they conduct their searches in the image catalog.  

Currently, plans are in place to create a series of videos about how to use resources in the VRC. This series will be referred to as "Know How" and will debut in the fall.

Over the next year, the following services will make their debut:
  1. Dynamically generated content boxes on the VRC's Web site to promote web resources.
  2. Vlogs - video blogs - will be added as content to the blog.
  3. Orientation and instruction sessions.
Over the next 2-3, the following services will be implemented:
  1. Social tagging in DASe - the image database.
  2. Instant messaging capabilities between the VRC and the image catalog's users.
  3. Image collections uploaded to Flickr.
  4. Mashups between the image catalog and applications like Google Maps. 

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work on such an interesting project!  I have learned a great deal from my experience at the VRC, and I'm very excited that I have been able to implement many things which will benefit the VRC over the next several years.