This is an updated presentation of FeedForward from the Repository Software Day in Manchester, March 2009

1. FeedForward
Scott Wilson & Kris Popat
http://getfeedforward.org

2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/395227944/sizes/o/
Put up your antennae!
“… I’m not explicitly seeking particular content
here - I’m establishing finely-tuned-antennae to
catch useful intelligence …”
Paul Walk, on the topic of “discovery to
delivery”

3. A FeedForward view of
information flow

4. Personal information
flows are really
complicated and go in
both directions.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/visualizing_social_media_fatigue.php

5. thankfully things are
starting to converge in
a way that makes things
easier to process and
manage

6. … though
configuring all
these services
is still
complicated and
users need
support.
We do some of
that in the
FeedForward app
but we also
could use some
support from
services,
registries,
etc. (more
later…)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogbomb/526961087/

8. FeedForward architecture
- “Deposit API” + SWORD
plan, early 2007
- OAI-PMH + OAI-ORE?
- SRU + OpenSearch?
What’s changed?
- IESR + TiCToCs
- XSPF + Twitter

9. Enough of this, show the demo!

10. Lessons learned

11. Some “high quality”
sources can still
produce pretty terrible
RSS

12. Its more productive to get the RSS/Atom feeds right than waste
time faffing with OAI-PMH or SRU or weird metadata profiles
Particularly as small development teams like ours aren’t good
at caring effectively interpreting specialised vertical
specifications that require care and attention to detail
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/2210391523/

13. Registries have proved a
bit of a problem
We wanted to use registry
services to help new users
get a good batch of
starting feeds
Except none of them worked
out for us
One had a good API, but
didn’t have any stuff in
it (IESR)
The other had loads of
good stuff, but no API*
(TicTocs)
*to be remedied soon!?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/silver_tusk/1256494428

14. If you need an API, and want to get people using
it quickly, then steal someone else’s
e.g. Magnolia “mirror” API == Delicious API
e.g.2 SWORD == AtomPub+
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/412683023/

15. SWORD is cool!
BUT finding this inside it isn’t:
METS
MODS
DIDL
IMS Content Packaging
Bagit
OAI-ORE
LOM
DC
Qualified DC
PRISM
OtherUnidentifiedStuff
(plus zillions of “profiles” of the above)
Packaging and metadata formats are a mess
Is a simple, reliable, lowest-common-denominator
standard too much to hope for?

16. On design:
Its easy enough adding more
features.

17. … but its when you take them away that
you know you’re really getting
somewhere!

18. Example: authoring
Sometimes all you really need is a 140-character textbox
We used to have a rich text editor - it was clunky as hell
Now we just have a text box. Its good enough, and quick.

19. More info, download etc : http://getfeedforward.org
FeedForward is Written in Eclipse/SWT. Uses Rome, Rome
Propono, some Nebula widgets, and some leftover bits of
Plex, RELOAD etc. It makes very extensive use of the
Eclipse async job API. Its all up on SVN with an MIT-
style license.
Give us feedback, requests, ideas on our trac site @
http://trac.cetis.ac.uk/trac.cgi/feedforward