OK. I can give you a tag immediately to do this. <br><br>Example: <br><br><barcode></barcode><br><br>I'll keep it simple. Barcode will not initially give you options. It will just create a universal unique ID for the OpenWetWare page. That way, we can use the exact same mechanism for the labels.
<br><br>Initially, you can place the tag anywhere. We can move it into the skin of OpenWetWare and provide a 'preference page' option to enable or disable it. That would output the tag at a known place on all pages.
<br><br>Since we do have a separate CSS style sheet for printed pages, we can restrict it to only be output via printer. Otherwise it would be invisible. <br><br>I'll put this up this afternoon. <br><br>B.<br><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Nov 2, 2007 8:58 AM, Tom Knight <<a href="mailto:tk@csail.mit.edu">tk@csail.mit.edu</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
So, another potentially worthwhile idea: When you print out pages,<br>provide an option to include a barcode which can be read. Then, if you<br>use a protocol that's been printed out, you can scan the barcode and<br>
link the correct page (including the correct version).<br><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br><br>On Nov 1, 2007, at 9:34 PM, Bill F wrote:<br><br>> There's a $29.95 package called "evo barcode" that claims to work. I
<br>> downloaded and tried it with a MacBook pro camera. After whooshing<br>> "A Life Decoded" in front of the scanner for 3-5 minutes, it still<br>> didn't get a good scan. It may be my technique. I'll try it tomorrow
<br>> again. The program has a 7 or 15 day trial period. It can be scripted<br>> to send the data to another app, like an input field on a web form. It<br>> clearly has some possibilities.<br>><br>> I also found an open source barcode reader library for the camera. But
<br>> the contents of the package literally is "open source" as in "source<br>> code".<br>><br>> This looks like a good one to track on the hardware page. Someone will<br>> have a better answer than me.
<br>><br>> It's a great solution to the problem, however. Barry has a stand-alone<br>> iSight camera that I'll try out tomorrow. Just don't tell him I'm the<br>> one who stole his camera.<br>>
<br>> Shh...<br>><br>><br>> On Nov 1, 2007 5:48 PM, Maureen Hoatlin <<a href="mailto:hoatlinm@ohsu.edu">hoatlinm@ohsu.edu</a>> wrote:<br>>> A quick comment about the barcode scanner. My mac comes with a camera
<br>>> which can act as a barcode scanner so some people may already have a<br>>> scanner if they have a camera on their computer. I'm not sure about<br>>> the software needed though.<br>>> -Maureen
<br>>><br>>><br>>><br>>> On 11/1/07 2:35 PM, "Bill Flanagan" <<a href="mailto:wjf42@MIT.EDU">wjf42@MIT.EDU</a>> wrote:<br>>><br>>>> I'd like to thank Steve Koch for both the way he helped pull
<br>>>> together last month's Lab Workbook Brainstorming Session and his<br>>>> continued assistance in working all of you to come up with what's<br>>>> turning into an exciting project.
<br>>>><br>>>> We're now starting to implement features coming out of the Working<br>>>> Group. We hope to have a follow-up session after we finish with next<br>>>> weeks OWW Board and Steering Committee meetings. Steve has already
<br>>>> indicated that he'll be moderating the next session as well.<br>>>><br>>>> Two particular features are starting to move forward that I want to<br>>>> briefly mention. I welcome your comments on them as well. One is
<br>>>> going to be introduced into OpenWetWare over the next few days. The<br>>>> feature is an extension of a feature in MediaWiki called "Magic<br>>>> Links". Any time you type the term 'PMID' and put a number next to
<br>>>> it, MediaWiki creates a usable link to PubMed when you save the<br>>>> document. With no special linking characters, these references allow<br>>>> a reader of the page to go to PubMed via NCBI and view the
<br>>>> associated document. This also works with Internet RFC document and,<br>>>> to a lesser degree, with ISBN book numbers. Thompson and Francois<br>>>> St. Pierre, PhD candidates in the lab my wife now calls my home,
<br>>>> told me about this feature. I had been working on MediaWiki for<br>>>> quite a while and never ran across it before.<br>>>><br>>>> We've now extended the original magic link concept to include
<br>>>> GenBank accession numbers, BioBrick parts, and references to<br>>>> Cornell's ArXiv (Archive X). Julius Luck's Atom-based network<br>>>> interface to that system is how we implemented it.
<br>>>><br>>>> In the case of GenBank accession numbers, we came up with an<br>>>> interesting way to allow the data to be viewed. We're generalizing<br>>>> it to the other network document repositories as time permits. I'll
<br>>>> keep you all up to date as we move forward.<br>>>><br>>>> When you hover your mouse over an accession number that has been<br>>>> linked, a small dialog box pops up. It initially will contain the
<br>>>> title of the GenBank record for the part. These links will only be<br>>>> present if a valid part number is entered. In the dialog box, a<br>>>> download tag is present. If you click it, OpenWetWare will download
<br>>>> the sequence from NCBI and stream it down to your desktop. If you<br>>>> have an application that knows about the '.gb' tag, the sequence and<br>>>> associated header information will be directly loaded into your
<br>>>> application. Vector NTI and CLC Free Workbench 4 are a few apps<br>>>> we've tested with. Once the sequence is downloaded the first time,<br>>>> it stays in our OWW cache and will zoom down to you or anyone else
<br>>>> requesting it for anytime forward. Tom Knight asked for an extension<br>>>> to this that I'm just finishing up. If you enter a term such as,<br>>>> "GENBAN U49845:12-1024", only base pairs 12-1024 will be downloaded.
<br>>>><br>>>> The other feature, originally suggested by Tm Knight, was a way to<br>>>> print labels from OWW. This has turned into a very fun feature. I've<br>>>> created a new tag, "<label>". The Label tag will permit you to enter
<br>>>> a label into your lab notebook (or any OWW document). When you save<br>>>> the page, an image of the label will be visible. If you click on the<br>>>> associated 'print' icon, the label will pop up in a separate
<br>>>> window along with a print dialog box. If you have a label printer<br>>>> available to you, you can print the label to it. I'm creating a new<br>>>> section called "OpenHardWare" to allow people to share their
<br>>>> experiences about which printers work best. I'm putting my money<br>>>> ($29.95! on ebay!) on a Brother USB label printer as our test<br>>>> platform.<br>>>><br>>>> The label will feature a barcode. Steve made a great suggestion to
<br>>>> tie the use of the labels back to OpenWetWare. The barcode will be a<br>>>> unique pointer, across all of OpenWetWare, that will associate the<br>>>> label with the page it is printed from. We want to create templates
<br>>>> for a few different kinds of labels used in the lab. We will have a<br>>>> way for anyone to create and contribute templates for specific sizes<br>>>> and layouts. Any petri dish in a lab using OpenWetWare for creating
<br>>>> these labels will find, if available, the exact context of where the<br>>>> page originally came from. Those stacks of plates you just found in<br>>>> the corner? Scan first, blame for taking up too much bench space
<br>>>> later.<br>>>><br>>>> I'm experimenting with a $10 barcode scanner, the CueCat, as a<br>>>> "necessary and sufficient" scanner for this activity. We also have<br>>>> access to more sensitive and expensive bar code readers but out goal
<br>>>> is to work with the absolutely most affordable barcode scanner we<br>>>> can find. <br>>>><br>>>> If anyone has suggestions as to what else we can do with this<br>>>> information, let me know. We'll be rolling out a very "beta" version
<br>>>> over the next few weeks. More features will follow as soon as we<br>>>> make them work.<br>>>><br>>>> We have several more tricks up our sleeves that I'm flushing out.<br>>>> More will follow.
<br>>>><br>>>> When MediaWiki ceases to be useful for doing what we need to do, we<br>>>> are extending it. The built-in archiving is a feature we desperately<br>>>> want to keep in the middle of everything we do. But how we create
<br>>>> the documents and what happens when we read them may vary from the<br>>>> standard product. Lab scientists have different requirements that<br>>>> Wikipedia readers. We want to make sure those needs are
<br>>>> accommodated without breaking OWW's essential 'Wikiness'.<br>>>><br>>>> As I said, please let me know what you all think.<br>>>><br>>>><br>>>> _______________________________________________
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