Tag Archives: comparison

RepUK

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About

The interest in exploiting the content to be found in institutional repositories is growing. At the same time, there is a range of possible uses for a central cache of metadata records held by institutional repositories.

RepUK harvests the metadata UK OpenDOAR registered repositories via OAI-PMH and presents the results in the form of visualisations. At the time of writing 152 repositories are havested. The 1.3 Million records and 26 Million elements are processed on a national and individual basis. In addition the metadata is presented as a faceted search based on Solr indexes.

See it in action

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Technologies

RepUK is a Java application running in Apache Tomcat, on a Spring 2.5, Spring Batch, Ibatis, MySQL and Solr stack.

Screenshots

 

Project Sunflower: The Unboxing Experience

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The devices (Amazon Kindle DX, Apple iPad and Motorola XOOM) we ordered a few weeks back finally arrived yesterday. Here’s how it went.

Kindle DX

Amazon has made great use of the Kindle’s E Ink display, with instructions displayed on the screen, waiting to be read once the Kindle is unboxed. The display showed where the power button was, asking to slide and release, and also to plug in the Kindle to a power source. On starting, the Kindle was already setup to the Amazon account it was registered with and displayed a user’s guide. Very simple.

iPad

Setting up the iPad was a bit tedious. On switching on the device, it immediately showed the iTunes USB screen that indicated connecting the iPad to a PC/Mac for setup. The iPad does not start unless connected to a PC/Mac that has iTunes installed. Since I did not have a desktop with iTunes installed, it took some time to install iTunes just to setup the iPad and get the iPad to work. Once this was done, the on-screen instructions took care of the rest. This issue will be solved in the next iOS update allowing wireless setup of iOS devices, but presently its not supported.

XOOM

The XOOM looked different from the other two devices, as its primary orientation is landscape and not portrait. The iPad and Kindle have the Power/Sleep button on the edge of the device. Expecting the same, I checked its edges for the power button. To my surprise, it was not to be found. After checking all sides and mistaking the SIM card slot for the power button, I decided to resort to the documentation. This was the first time I had to check documentation given with the device to find the power button. Its a concave button, placed very close to the camera, which is hardly visible in low lighting conditions. However, it was only a first time thing, after which it made sense as to why the button is placed where it is. Its very convenient and easy to reach when holding the device in landscape mode, as your finger naturally rests very close to the button.

Now, since the wait is done and the devices are finally here, we can start working with them.