Interesting Proposal

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 10th, 2002, 6:49 pm

Hi all,
I have a question for anyone willing to answer... I'm working on building a community database for a neighborhood resource center in my city as part of a graduate practicum. Anyways, the database is mainly going to be .bmp images of GIS maps, access tables with names of social services, contact info, etc. Anyways, I need a method to "browse" the data in the "database" (I guess it's more of a knowledge base but semantical ponderings aside)... I was thinking that Phoenix might work if I could customize it enough that it would start up at the first page of the database and provide linkages... blah blah blah... my main question is... can you set up the browser so that it only surfs the database? Don't know if this is even workable, I'm just trying to figure out an intuitive means to surf through a wealth og information on a local database that is like "surfing the web"... any suggestions are welcomed.

Post by **alanjstr** » December 10th, 2002, 6:58 pm

rbrimhal wrote:Hi all,
I have a question for anyone willing to answer... I'm working on building a community database for a neighborhood resource center in my city as part of a graduate practicum. Anyways, the database is mainly going to be .bmp images of GIS maps, access tables with names of social services, contact info, etc. Anyways, I need a method to "browse" the data in the "database" (I guess it's more of a knowledge base but semantical ponderings aside)... I was thinking that Phoenix might work if I could customize it enough that it would start up at the first page of the database and provide linkages... blah blah blah... my main question is... can you set up the browser so that it only surfs the database? Don't know if this is even workable, I'm just trying to figure out an intuitive means to surf through a wealth og information on a local database that is like "surfing the web"... any suggestions are welcomed.

search around for "Kiosk" mode

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 10th, 2002, 7:00 pm

thanks man

amutch · Post by **amutch** » December 11th, 2002, 11:11 am

See:

http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/pro/phoenix/

You'll want to lock in by address and then follow the kiosk tutorial. Let me know if you have questions.

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 11th, 2002, 11:14 am

Yeah, I found it by searching... still going over it but it looks promising... now I have to figure out the technical database issues... uggh

amutch · Post by **amutch** » December 11th, 2002, 3:30 pm

I see. You're not going to be doing straight web-browsing. How exactly are you going to serve up the data?

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 11th, 2002, 3:51 pm

well, the idea is to have the data on a lan in the resource center... the perusal of the database should look and feel like "surfing the net" but all the info. would be self-contained into one localized source. Phoenix works great for viewing the images (like .bmp maps of GIS Data) but I am a little unsure as how to proceed with info like social service provider info (name, telephone, programs offered, etc.)... eventually, I would like to expand the database to include websurfing as well to .gov sites and local resources available online but first wanted to focus on collecting resources into one location... the main thing , I think, that Phoenix can accomplish with this idea is providing an intuitive GUI for users who are not necessarily computer savvy or those who have never used a computer or database directory before... the gist of the project is to attack the "digital divide" that exists in poor, inner-city communities by forming a database of financial, legal, cultural, social, transportation, etc. indexes for the residents of these communities... any suggestions on how to proceed are appreciated... thanks

Post by **alanjstr** » December 11th, 2002, 5:05 pm

rbrimhal wrote:well, the idea is to have the data on a lan in the resource center... the perusal of the database should look and feel like "surfing the net" but all the info. would be self-contained into one localized source. Phoenix works great for viewing the images (like .bmp maps of GIS Data) but I am a little unsure as how to proceed with info like social service provider info (name, telephone, programs offered, etc.)... eventually, I would like to expand the database to include websurfing as well to .gov sites and local resources available online but first wanted to focus on collecting resources into one location... the main thing , I think, that Phoenix can accomplish with this idea is providing an intuitive GUI for users who are not necessarily computer savvy or those who have never used a computer or database directory before... the gist of the project is to attack the "digital divide" that exists in poor, inner-city communities by forming a database of financial, legal, cultural, social, transportation, etc. indexes for the residents of these communities... any suggestions on how to proceed are appreciated... thanks

You might want to choose a different image format. I suggest ASP or PHP for coding

amutch · Post by **amutch** » December 11th, 2002, 5:39 pm

I think you are working with two concepts:

1) Interface: Yes, Phoenix is an excellent interface, especially if you put it into Kiosk mode. K-Meleon is another free, Mozilla-based browser that I work on and with. It is highly customizable and can also be put into kiosk mode. Either shoudl work well for what you are creating.

2) Database: It sounds to me like you want to combine a database of info. with web-based resources. It would probably be easiest for users if the data was served out in web pages with images. Like another posted noted, .BMP might not be the best image format. Before you go and reinvent the wheel, I would see what local agencies and libraries offer already in terms of this data. You might see some good ideas for format and structure. Once you have an idea of what you want, I would construct an easy-to-use web interface for accessing the data. There are open and proprietary solutions that can allow you to query databases and serve up the results in web pages. Two popular solutions are:

Apache/PHP/mySQL - Apache web server, PHP scripting language, mySQL database - advantages are that all are open and free and plenty of community support.

IIS/ASP/Access or SQL - IIS web server, ASP scripting language, Access or SQP database - Microsoft's alternatives that are proprietary and closed. But they are relatively well-known.

`jarsonic · Post by **`jarsonic** » December 11th, 2002, 6:15 pm

I recommend converting the .bmp files to PNGs, if you want lossless.

- `jarsonic

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 11th, 2002, 6:16 pm

thanks for the insights... I'm an urban anthropologist trying to grasp techonological factors as well as my social science concepts. I had the basic idea but not the logistical methods for achieving the idea. Your help is greatly appreciated!!!

wget · Post by **wget** » December 11th, 2002, 7:39 pm

`jarsonic wrote:I recommend converting the .bmp files to PNGs, if you want lossless.

If you choose PNG—which you should—you need to take a look at pngcrush too (download it from here). It'll make the files smaller and that's a good thing (even if LAN bandwidth knows no boundaries or download limits).

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » December 12th, 2002, 7:44 am

And if you are manually compressing your PNG's then PNG rewrite in combination with Crush will make your "gif level" PNGs really really small (usually they are 20-30% smaller then the correponding GIF).

http://entropymine.com/jason/pngrewrite/

Just remember to REWRITE before you CRUSH

rbrimhall · Post by **rbrimhall** » December 12th, 2002, 7:52 am

I appreciate everyone's help on this... I'm going to test out a sample image today from ArcMap and see exactly what type of image I can export as (I know it can do AI, JPEG, GIF, BMP but it would be cool if it saved as PNG)...

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » December 12th, 2002, 7:56 am

If nothing else you can always download www.gimp.org , which is a reall good Freeware Graphics util.
It saves PNG.

There are also alot of other freeware tools out there eg automatic BMPtoPNG converters.

You can find them on the PNG homepage
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/

Interesting Proposal

Interesting Proposal

Re: Interesting Proposal

Kiosk mode

Database

database ideas