Hi

Creating a Google Gadget for rosetta might be a great way to get a LOT of notice.

No idea how to do it, or what it involves, but I expect its based on RSS???

Danny

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Hi

Creating a Google Gadget for rosetta might be a great way to get a LOT of notice.

No idea how to do it, or what it involves, but I expect its based on RSS???

Danny

Yes, although I know this Boinc software is stupidly easy to use it still could be made even more user friend and ubiquitous. A plugin on every firefox/explora etc broswer on the planet makes sense. You choose the project, do I want the quick end to disease, to find ET, understand the planet? That and when its runs should be the only basic options. Surely a someone who writes these plugins can be persuaded of the altruism of these projects?

How many internet connected computers are there in the world at the moment?...

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If you look at the figures, less than 1,000,000 people contribute to Boinc. Over 1,000,000,000 are connected to the net, they all have to access with some sort of browser (mainly IE and firefox), even if less than half have the right hardware thats still 400 X the crunching capacity. It makes how do I overclock my system or is 64bit supported seem a little irrelevant. Suerly ALL effort should be focused on a VERY simple plugin? I'll admit to not knowing enough about the mechanics, it could be an almost intractable problem for all I know...

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How to do a Google Gadget

Has anybody taken action on this? I would be willing to build a team and organize the project if no one has stepped up yet.

Whiteston, welcome to Rosetta!

I admire your enthusiasm, especially for being so new to the project.

In order to create a Google Gadget, you are going to need the Rosetta source code. This is not released to the public and is not shareware. Rosetta is designed to run under BOINC, not a browser... so redesign would also be required. And Rosetta needs a significant amount of CPU time (30min or more sometimes) before it has reached a checkpointable state, and can cause overheating issues on PCs with poor or limited ventilation.

As such, it's really not a good fit to be used via Google Gadget. Also...
The google information says:

Developers can program in:
Visual Studio .NET
Java
Perl
Python
any language that supports COM and XML
JavaScript and VBScript(Sidebar only)

...and I suspect Rosetta is not presently coded in any of those languages/environments. So a complete rewrite would be required... and that's assuming they provide you a copy of the source to work with.

Perhaps there are other ways to help out Rosetta.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I meant create a gadget to pick up the news (and maybe forum) feeds! Although, thinking about it, a gadget that displayed an animation from the Rosetta screensaver would be a great way to attract newbies. I don't mean for it to run rosetta code in the gadget - just display the animation to get attention, then explain the project briefly, and show how to install...

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OH!!!! I'm sorry, I completely misunderstood. I've read that BOINC is working on adding some RSS news feeds into the BOINC Manager. This would give existing participants a way to get updates on things like server outages, or specific WUs that are causing problems and should abort. Anyway, that's another story.

Yes, I like this idea. "A Rosetta Information Gadget". In fact, perhaps we could use such a gadget to test a PC to assure it meets the minimum requirements for Rosetta. And then it could have a window with links to information and downloads... or even download BOINC and Rosetta for you in the background and notify you when it's ready for install.

And on an ongoing basis, perhaps a monitor of CPU time wasted when your computer was powered on, but the CPU wasn't actively doing anything (to help make the point that IT is generally idle, even when you ARE using it). If a person powers on their computer and leaves it on for a 9 hour work day, and at the end of the day it says you could have spent 8.6 hours crunching Rosetta, it makes ya think! Or maybe you click a "check PC utilization" button and it pops back the result 60min later or something.

...what else do people think should go in to such a gadget?

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Yes, I like this idea. "A Rosetta Information Gadget". In fact, perhaps we could use such a gadget to test a PC to assure it meets the minimum requirements for Rosetta. And then it could have a window with links to information and downloads... or even download BOINC and Rosetta for you in the background and notify you when it's ready for install.

And on an ongoing basis, perhaps a monitor of CPU time wasted when your computer was powered on, but the CPU wasn't actively doing anything (to help make the point that IT is generally idle, even when you ARE using it). If a person powers on their computer and leaves it on for a 9 hour work day, and at the end of the day it says you could have spent 8.6 hours crunching Rosetta, it makes ya think! Or maybe you click a "check PC utilization" button and it pops back the result 60min later or something.

...what else do people think should go in to such a gadget?

I think those are great ideas.

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The real trick does not seem to be the development of the gadget but getting it out there to the public. I only learned about Google Gadget recently via the world cup links they have had on the personalized pages. I usually keep up on these things (slashdot, digg, etc.) but it took me a while to catch on.

If it is being used to bring new users into the fold (p.i.) then it should be something that is readily apparent? that said, I do think that this is a great way to go. Just palying devil's advocate.

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Yes, once you have it... how to promote it is the next obvious question. But Google has a list of gadgets for those that are in to them already. And it might read better for a journalist to say go "look for a Google Gadget called Rosetta to learn more about it" than to say "go to boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta and view the boring text links with more information".

So, I think if you can make it functional, with links to greater details and some imagry to catch the eye, then the ways to drive traffic to it come later fairly readily.

So, the question to brainstorm on here, before starting to make one is "what should it do?" "What type of information should it make available?" and "Does that information already exist somewhere?"

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Well said. Then let's begin our list shall we? Brainstorm is definitely the best place to start, then we can build requirements and get everyone on board.

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We can brainstorm right here. My initial thoughts are in this post. But let's see what other thoughts people have on the subject of what it should do and have.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I think it'd be good if it:

1. Gave an overview of the project, with moving pics of the proteins being folded.
This would need to look professional though.

2. Tested the system for suitability

3. Initiated download/install if accepted by the user

4. Allowed newsfeeds/forum post titles to be displayed

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They are working on some video animations of protein structures. Perhaps we could take a short snip from that work. It looks like most Gadgets are a pretty small download, so I think we'd want to keep it small.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I think there should actually be two gadgets, one which is informational for people that do not have Rosetta, and one to be more of an aid for those that already are crunching Rosetta.

I've already floated some ideas about the Informational one.

As for the AID gadget, wouldn't it be neat if it could make you aware of new BOINC and Rosetta versions? Then it could allow you to schedule a time you'd like to download them. So you could continue crunching your existing WUs, download the new R@H release in advance, and then when you connect to the server and get WUs for the new release, you've already got it. Would be especially handy for dial up users.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

It does look like there is a fork in the road that we will have to take here shortly(ala Yogi Bera). Is the focus of this project to attract people to Rosetta/Boinc or is this for current users?

I agree that both are valid tools, we should probably decide which one is best to tackle first. I'm guessing there are very few people available as resources for scripting.

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