+++ Welcome to IPT 1.0 beta +++
GBIF is happy to announce the first public beta version of the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit. We have been working for quite a while on this software and finally reached a stage where we want to engage early users to get feedback. The IPT allows to host and share species occurrence or taxonomic checklist datasets based on an extendible darwin core as well as pure metadata descriptions for biological resources, whether they have been digitised or not. You can find further information on the project homepage: http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/
We are providing a public live demo installation at GBIF for anyone to try out. To gain access to most of the functionality you will have to register as a new user and ask me or Tim to assign you additional "manager" rights. http://ipt.gbif.org
His voice may not be that of Morgan Freeman, but Tim has done a great job recording some screen casts to get you started. Before getting angry about the still missing user manual (which is being worked on and will be ready for the final release) please watch this movie first: ftp://ftp.gbif.org/projects/ipt/tutorial/beta/9minuteDemo.mov
If you prefer to install the IPT yourself you can find basic instructions on the project site and you should also watch Tim playing with Tomcat: http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/wiki/Installation ftp://ftp.gbif.org/projects/ipt/tutorial/beta/installIPT.mov
We'd like to thank any beta testers already. Your testing will help us improve the software and provide new ideas that we will try to incorporate in future releases. Please consider the following guidelines when testing: - if you run into any bugs, report them as issues in google code, which is linked at the bottom of every IPT page. - if you have any questions whatsoever, please post them on this mailing list instead of contacting us individually. This helps others facing the same problems.
For the proper user manual and other documentation like screen casts we are always seeking help too. There is even some funding available for people willing to spend more time. In any of those case please get in touch with our training officer Alberto Gonzalez-Talavan: atalavan@gbif.org
Thanks for your interest. I can't wait to get flooded with bug reports ;)
Markus
-- Markus Döring Bioinformatics Software Engineer GBIF Secretariat mdoering@gbif.org