Latest on Website: Geoff, Rajesh, Shova
1. Main NCBS portal page: Week-by-week changes have been OK'd
2. Main News Page: Framework near-complete
- http://news.ncbs.res.in/
- Many additional features made possible by ProsePoint architecture (comments, linking to Digg, etc)
- "Front Page" works mostly as an automatic aggregator of most recent sub-section stories
- Slight tweaks needed to page style (Rajesh, Shova)
- Errors occurring if not logged in (will add in all team members as users)
3. Single story page: Done
4. Sub-section pages: Framework complete, just need to add in stories
5. Site will go online Jan 2
- Publish new weekly edition each Saturday pm
- News team meet each Wed pm
- Prepare top section of new edition Thursday
Stories in progress:
Breaking Barriers Preview: Nisha: Draft in, Graphic in progress (Jan 2)
Bioinformatic Conf Preview: Geoff: Text complete, Graphic Complete (Jan 9)Narlikar thinks out of the Box;Vinodh, Manish: Draft in, Graphic in progress (Jan 16)
Preview of Molecular Motors Conf: Prabhat, Sucheta: Draft in, Graphic in progress (Jan 23)
Update on Wildlife Program: Geoff: Draft in, Graphic in progress (Jan 30)
Preserving Kerala's Ayurvedic Heritage: Geoff: Draft in, Graphics to be supplied
SeasonWatch story: Uttara: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Art Science Fusion: Sarita: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Kaustubh's War on Pollution: Shikha: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
India Tackles the Brain Drain: Geoff: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Staffing
- Mohit Jolly from IIT Kanpur has indicated he will come to NCBS on a regular basis. First visit will be in Feb 2010.
- Advertisements for jornalist/s and multimedia recruits need to be placed
Other
Stories need to keep coming in
- Some to be published as Portal Page stories, after Jan 30
- Others to be Front Page stories, during and after January
- Need someone who can provide editorial advice
Need some more blogs or just one-off rants, for Opinion section
Next meeting: Wednesday Dec 2. Ill nominally set it for 3pm, but would people prefer a bit later, say 5pm?
We now have roll-out dates for the January front page stories, all which will appear at a weekly interval, on Sat afternoon.
Jan 2: Breaking Barriers Meet preview
Jan 9: Bioinformatics Meet preview
Jan 16: Narlikar Interview
Jan 23: Molecular Motors preview
Jan 30: The Wlldlife Success Story continues
Those involved in writing the text for these stories, please send me latest drafts tomorrow, Monday at the v latest. Shova has been working very hard on the graphics side of things, an has them under control. Vijay and Upi have granted Shova permission to adapt the main portal page's color scheme to match the front page graphic of the week. Should make for an exciting fresh look!
This will cover us beyond my Jan 27 return date, and hopefully the Season Watch story could come together for Feb 6?
We also have some interesting "page 2" stories shaping up
- the Spanish Connection (TV crew documents Eva in the lab; Sarita
- Reunion in India Story - from Sowdhamini's lab (Shameer)
Rajesh from computing has found an absolutely amazing and free News Site management system, called ProsePoint, and so already the NCBS news Site (minus any stories) is online!!
NCBS news You can click on one of the fake sample stories to see what an individual story page would look like.
Prposepoint is extraordinarily powerful so myself and rajesh are reading through the documentation to see how to work with it, and add in NCBS's existing News content to this. Prosepoint Documentation
It would be great if someone from the team could assume responsibility for doing some minor weekly refreshments to the main news page during January. Please contact me if you are, and we will get together on Tuesday (at latest) for a chat.
The following stories are in progress:
Narlikar thinks out of the Box;Vinodh, Manish: Draft in, Graphic needed
Preview of Molecular Motors Conf: Prabhat, Sucheta: Interview complete, Graphic needed
Bioinformatic Conf Preview: Geoff: Draft in, Graphic Complete
Update on Wildlife Program: Geoff: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Art Science Fusion: Sarita: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Kaustubh's War on Pollution: Shikha: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Breaking Barriers Preview: Nisha: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
India Tackles the Brain Drain: Geoff: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Migrant Watch Member Watch: Uttara: Draft Needed, Graphic Needed
Sanjeev Jhayan (NIMHANS) Interview: ?:
Latest on Website Templates: Geoff, Rajesh, Shova
1. Main portal page: OK
2. Single story page: Easy to do
3. Main News Page: More to do
- Rajesh has pinpointed suitable source of Drupal templates
- http://demo.prosepoint.org/
Need to:
1. Finalise a clustering system for stories: Geoff
2. Find someone willing to update once a week
Video Online: Geoff, Avinash: Long way to go!
* Bandwidth vs Quality Issues
-From NCBS and end-users points of view
* Vimeo?
* Security Issues
Social Media
VijayRhagavan supports idea of Facebook, Twitter: Takers?
I've been working on a graphic for a preview story for the Bioinformatics conference, and have attached a copy of our current front page with it inserted to give everyone a chance to see what we are aiming at.
Shova made the very good point that anything added cant result in a graphic horrorshow, so in this case Ive gone for a fairly harmonious color scheme. MIT changes their entire front page color scheme based on theday's new graphic! Something to think of for down the track, but in the meantime we can:
(1) try to make the graphic fit the existing scheme
(2) if any graphic cant be shoehorned into existing scheme, perhaps change the color of a few features (eg "About Us" etc boxes) when needed (thanks Shova).
All feedback is good!
geoff
Seema Singh, who writes science stories for the Times of India, and a science blog for the Wall Street Journal, will give us a crash course in science journalism in our very next meet, Wednesday, Nov 25. She will be here at 3.30pm, so we will kick off at 3pm to cover the other stuff before she arrives. Below are some links to her blog, stories etc. For some weird reason the rendering of the Times stories completely removes the upper case and paragraphing - don't emulate these particular features in your own stories!
Her WSJ Blog
Siddiqui Story
Infertility Story
Mini-Bio
Shovamayee Maharana from Shiva's lab will generously provide the benefit of her artistic flair to anyone who needs help with the graphics for each story. I have updated her about the stories in progress, so she might approach those involved. She will also consult with Rajesh from computing about the design aspects of the web-page modifications.
