Dear Insight Community,

WHO, WHAT, WHERE & WHEN  These are the names of the four facets, or categories we’ve built in the new LUNA browser, which will help your end users find what they’re looking for by filtering their search results. We’ll also use them to introduce today’s topics related to LUNA and the Insight v6.0 release.

WHEN
We are currently publishing test collections to LUNA on a variety of databases and server platforms. Once we get through the testing phase, and resolve the myriad collection and platform specific complexities, we’ll be ready for the general release of Insight v6.0. We know that many of you typically schedule upgrades during the break between Spring and Summer semesters. Because the v6.0 upgrade is additive, you will be able to publish your collections to LUNA without interrupting the operation of your Insight server components. This will give you much more flexibility about when you upgrade to Insight 6.0.

WHERE
For the first time, you’ll be able to go to our Luna Imaging, Inc. web site and download the Installers directly.

WHAT
The v6.0 upgrade is focused on the new LUNA browser and introduces the LUNA Publisher and the LUNA Server.

The LUNA Publisher is a new component linked to the Studio client which enables collection owners to publish their Insight collections to LUNA. LUNA communicates with the Insight Collection Manager and receives data for the Lucene index for extremely fast cross-collection searching through LUNA.

One of the functions built into the LUNA Publisher is the “Who, What, Where, When” data mapping which provides the opportunity to map up to twenty of your collection specific data fields to these 4 headings for streamlined category browsing and faceted results filtering. You can also select the Summary fields that will be revealed upon cursor rollover. The Summary fields will supplement the 4 viewable thumbnail fields for end-users browsing in LUNA as well as the full catalog data available in the Detail View and LUNA Workspace.

Collections published to LUNA are indexed on the LUNA Server. Collections available for public access will also be indexed on the LUNA Community Server. The LUNA Publisher will automatically update the indexes based upon a schedule that you define.

WHO
Well, you, of course. We know you all have v6.0 related questions so we wanted to share 6 of the most popular.

Will Insight Java Client groups be published to LUNA?  Yes, groups created in the client and saved to the Insight server (groups must be in shared folders) can be migrated to LUNA. LUNA enables end-users to build, share, link, embed, play back, and export Media Groups. LUNA enables your end-users to define access levels (public or private with optional password protection) and create folders to streamline access and support local management.

What about Presentations?  The Presentation tool enables end-users to arrange multiple images and specify details to create a series of customized slides while in the LUNA Workspace. Compared to the Detail View (one media asset with full data at a time) the LUNA Workspace is designed as more of a mashup tool for working with multiple media assets at one time. While Media Groups can conveniently be played back as a simple slide show, the Presentation tool allows users to create more elaborate Presentations for playback and export.

When creating these customized slides for Presentations, end-users can select media from multiple Media Groups and search results which may also include content from Flickr. Instead of building Personal Collections in Insight, personal images will be now be stored on Flickr. LUNA Presentations can be shared via a simple URL link, embedded as a dynamic web widget, and exported to PowerPoint or Keynote. Legacy Insight client presentations will not be represented in LUNA.

What will the end-users see?  When they get to the LUNA Homepage for available collections they will have several options: the search box will enable them to enter a term and immediately begin searching across all of the available LUNA collections; they can navigate to just one specific collection; they can click on one of the featured media items and view it in the Detail View; they can head right into the Browse All view or the Category View. They can also begin by creating a user account. The user account will manage their viewing preferences (thumbnail size, images per page), which collections they want to view, and which Media Group is their default.

What about User Management?  Since LUNA is browser based, access is simplified and it will not be necessary to manage client downloads and updates. End-users can register and manage their own accounts where they will have full control over their viewing preferences, or authenticate through the Insight User Manager where institutions can employ a single sign on system such as Active Directory or LDAP for authentication. Access has been simplified so that you can spend less time on account management and more on content delivery.

How will we access community content?  With the introduction of the LUNA Community Server we have created a place to centrally index and provide access to all of the Insight Community collections. It will no longer be necessary for you to retrieve administrative settings from the Collection Sharing Registry. Instead you will be able to reference the LUNA Community Server from the local LUNA Server and your end-users will have options for expanded content.

What does “optimized” for discovery mean?  Insight collections published to LUNA are optimized for web-discovery for search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The LUNA interface was designed (font size, data structure, exposed text, image tags) to make it possible for these search engines to index and point to the resources that define your collections. Plus, the more successful the search engines are in accessing your content the better the page ranking; this improved page ranking will benefit all of the Community Collections published in LUNA.

Our next conference this season will take us to Montreal for Museums and the Web. We look forward to previewing the features of LUNA during this event, and seeing your collections published to LUNA in the months ahead.

Nancy Harm
Director of Business Development
Luna Imaging, Inc.
www.lunaimaging.com
917-521-1309
nancy@lunaimaging.com