The Shape of Engage:

• Mobile

• WebKit + JavaScriptCore
• HTML, CSS, JavaScript for all UI & logic
• Start with iPhone, another platform too (Android or Nokia Symbian). Infusion FSS could be extended.
• concern about iPhone's accessibility
• another platform not decided on yet
• are visitors expected to come w/ their own devices? will museums buy new equip (realistic?)?

• Mapping & Visualization
  -visualizing relationships between objects & concepts. UI that work on desktop & mobile that can provide visitors w/ a sense of how the exhibit is organized in space

• main tech:
• HTML Canvas
• Processing + Processing.js
• parser for Processing code to be rendered in HTML canvas?
• open web alternative to Flash

• Service Layer

• Foremost, ability to handle different data
  -how to work w/ data in many systems so data can be presented to visitors in interesting ways
  -how can visitors contribute to content (e.g. tagging, creating their own collections, connections w/ outside resources such as social networking)
• Affordable to museums
• Open and accessible to contributors
• Two forerunners:
  1. Pure Python stack
• CherryPy, SpringPython, etc.
• write a new renderer when needed
  2. Server-side JavaScript
• practically, backed by the JVM
• potentially could move to V8 for speed
• all server-side code in JS
• ChangeApplier will be key
• Model infrastructure shared across both the client and server (i.e. awesome)
• main code to write:
• request handling and path parsing
• opportunity to share code directly with the CollectionSpace project

• Persistence:
  1. CouchDB
• flexible schema
• museum catalogs tend to change - but SQL quite rigid
• MySQL - highly dynamic queries over static schema
  Couch - queries static, schema more flexible, document-based
• useful intro to Couch: http://books.couchdb.org/relax/why-couchdb

2. Solr/Lucene

*Role of Infusion in Engage
-prominent (e.g. FSS for handheld experience)
-Web good for allowing access by many different platforms (e.g phone, kiosk, browsers)