On the State of Scientific Telecollaboration?

Douglas Arnold asks: "This summer I will take over as director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, one of the world's premier institutes in the mathematical sciences. (This year's program on mathematics in multimedia should interest many Slashdot readers) The IMA hosts visits by over a thousand scientists a year, mostly using Linux to meet their computing needs. I am interested in pursuing telecollaboration and teleconferencing at the institute, so a scientist there can work with a scientist off-site, carrying on a mathematical discussion as if they were at the same blackboard. What sort of hardware and software exists for this sort of application? Is there anything that works well under Linux? I am thinking of things like shared whiteboards, 'collaboratories,' networked graphics tablets (on which it is comfortable to enter formulas and do calculations), integration with audio or video conferencing systems, and so forth."

Comments

Your Asking the wrong folks the wrong question

[Zachary Kessin]

Don't ask a bunch of Linux geeks how to do "Math Stuff" on linux. Ask your customers the scientists what they need. While we can give you some interesting ideas we as a rule have no idea what you need, and therefore can't get you there.

Or as a bumper sticker I saw said:
We don't know where we are going, but we're making record time!

Listen to the customer

[maggard]

Electric-chalkboards are a dime a dozen - talk to your purchasing person.

Frankly I'd not approach it from "I like Linux how can we use it" direction but rather from "What are my researchers comfortable with and how can I support that?" As you noted this is about collaboration; you're going to need to interoperate with a large number of systems not under your control.

With that in mind your goal is likely to be platform independence, not Linux-specific solutions. Standard protocols, not specific "solutions".

As part of that you'll presumably want a system that supports both pen-based graphics (the classic "scribbled on a napkin") as well as more structured mathematical layout (as used by TeX, MathML or Mathematica.) Really you'll need whatever folks express themselves most easily in. For voice the telephone is universal & standardized, video has a number of reasonable standards with some degree of interoperability.

Personally I'd invest in a good computing infrastructure, encourage the researchers to network with their peers & discover solutions that suit them, or failing that undertake to write/sponsor an open tool that would facilitate the collaboration you're looking for.

Whatever the case I'd wait until I was in place, see what's being used now, how effective it is and what directions present themselves. Your user base is likely to have some strong opinions and presumably has some experience with what works for them and what doesn't.

(f it were up to me I'd look into some sort of Wiki system that supports mathematical notation - hit a search engines for details, here's one hit: http://allmyfaqs.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Math_symbols. That & again, good telephones.)

Re:Listen to the customer

[austad]

The IMA and the Mathematics dept at the U of MN has been using linux very extensively since early '97. Most of the workstations in the labs, and even professor's personal machines are linux. It's very important that whatever they use run on linux.

I remember when I worked there and we got the first PPro 200. It kept up with our 2 main Sparc 20's, and it was a professor's personal machine. I used to log into it and render PovRAY scenes since the Sparce were usually being pounded on figuring out some crazy Mathematica problem that would take 3 months of computing. :)

Tablets

[mcelrath]

I've been having fantasies about a tablet computer for over a year now. I want something that isn't too much larger or heavier than a large tablet of paper, and combines pen-input with a computer interface. I'm talking handwriting recognition, gesture recognition, and most importantly, a headphone jack and mp3-playing software.

The hardware exists...a 11" TFT LCD screen, Wacom-like pen input overlaid on top. It needs to have a high resolution (both the screen and input) for accurate handwriting recognition. Wouldn't need a very fast processor. Could sync to my computer over USB.

As a theoretical physicist, I desparately want something like this. I'm a massive computer junkie, but currently, the highest-tech way I can do calculations is pencil and paper... On the math side, recognizing mathematical notation will be very hard, and would require a lot of work in user interfaces. In the short term, just recording the user's penstrokes and saving it as a vector graphic would be sufficent. In the long term, interface it to a basic Computer Algebra System. i.e. something that will check all those factors of two, negative signs, etc. In the very long term, have the interface do most of what I do by hand. For instance, apply a mathematical identity to an equation, and copy the new equation to the next line. Allow me to manipulate individual terms. Most of all, allow me to define new notations. Each sub-field of math, physics, chemistry, and engineering uses its own notation, and a rule-system should exist to check the validity of the input in the notation that is familiar to the user.

Right now I use pencil and paper, some Maple, and computer programs to numerically evaluate things. Maple's interface is not well suited to a pen-based manipulation system. (don't mention Mathematica, I will not professionally support their absurd pricing and draconian licensing policies) I have high hopes that a viable open-source Computer Algebra System will evolve out of the existing Octave or GiNaC.

*Sigh* if any of you entreprenuring business types are listening, WE WANT TABLETS AND WE WANT THEM YESTERDAY . And not those stupid web-browser tablets. sheesh.

--Bob

videoconferencing - qVIX

[mojo-raisin]

See here for qVIX/cu30, a GPL'ed videoconferencing program put out by Cornell that is superior in quality and bandwidth requirements over Netscape's Netmeeting.

Though it seems to require some extra work for the integration you have in mind.