DigitalOcean Technology

Technology: DigitalOcean runs on a robust, open-source content management system; DO builds on existing modules to leverage community support; DO always looks to support community-based standards for data interoperability; DO links its core system to partner systems using their shared APIs; DO will extend Flash data animation for thousands of marine protected areas; DO will allow community programmers to enhance its system through the DO standards-based API. DigitalOcean is not an expensive new technology development effort. Rather, it is an existing technology extension and deployment effort.

Content: DigitalOcean content collections will be seeded with high quality content from core members and partners; DO communities will add content to the system and value to the content; DO content will be licensed for reuse; DO content will include, photographs, videos, data, science results, critiques of science, citation collections, job listings, and a range of peer-to-peer interactions facilitated by the social network software.

Drupal CMS
The DigitalOcean project examined several leading open-source content management systems (CMS). At the review matrix (see: Appendix) reveals, Drupal (http://drupal.org/) offered the best combination of existing features and active community programming support for new features. Drupal (the word means “drop”—as in water drop— in Dutch) is a full featured, award-winning CMS and provides a host of services out of the box. Drupal runs on a wide range of servers (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) using IIS or Apache and PHP with either mySQL or postgreSQL. In short it is well compatible with standard standard webservice database setups.

DO will stand up as many instances of Drupal as required to service multiple communities and projects, while preserving interoperability of all DO data and user signups. The current version, Drupal 6.5, supports unicode for international deployment. The ECOS Social Network will take advantage of Drupal core technology and additional modules provided by key partners, such as OuThink Media, to handle video resources. The DO Drupal team will expand existing Drupal resources that support Creative Commons licensing, georeferencing metadata, structured tagging, KML export to Google Earth, and semantic coding.

Flickr™ API
Flickr™, a service of Yahoo!™ offers an extensive API which will facilitate adding DigitalOcean services into the DigitalOcean Flickr Group, and also Flickr photo feeds into the ECOS Network. Project staff have been in conversation with the Flickr project team to facilitate this interaction.

Creative Commons Licensing
DigitalOcean will enable reuse of its content objects by encouraging providers to attach Creative Commons (CC) licenses to these. CC licensing will be available as a default for all content in the system, and as an option for all contributed media. DO will work with Creative Commons programmers to integrate the latest versions of these licenses directly into DO content through the XMP metadata standard framework.

Google Earth/Ocean layer technology
The DigitalOcean Google Ocean layer will host a premiere subset of the DO media and science collections. Google Ocean provides a real-world simulation for media/data browsing. All content that can be geolocated will have geolocation services made available for this purpose. KML file export services will be made available from the Drupal site and from the DO Flickr Group. The DO MPA Project and the DO Sampling the Sea Project expand on existing data display technologies developed at UC Santa Barbara for the PISCO Project. These technologies use Adobe Flash™ to provide interactive animated data displays. The PISCO data model for fish population data will be made available to all scientists with data for MPAs or other study areas to visualize and insert into the DO Google Ocean layer.

Video Management technology
DigitalOcean video assets will be processed using contributed technology from OuThink in a partnership with the Internet Archive. OuThink’s Drupal-based video collection tools will be expanded to include HD resolution handling. New services for online video mashups are being explored and will be implemented when practicable.