11–20 of 28 posts
It's not quite clear to me what kind of features you have to "reduce isolation"? Also, how easy is it to integrate an existing web page design into labit?
I would actually be interested to move our research groups website there. However, I'd first have to check with the Uni IT / security if it is allowed to host a website externally. This could be a general problem - did you look into University policies to see if this could be an often occuring issue?
Your question is quite common among our first adopters. We have talked with representatives of a few universities. As of now they don't have any objections. However, we are working on clarifying this with other universities in US and Europe. In any case, the functionality that Labit currently offers doesn't pose a risk to individuals and research groups. Moreover, many labs host their pages on Wix, WordPress, SquareS…
Of course, all data hosted on the lab website is usually not sensitive. But I know of a couple of unis where the policy is quite rigid and they simply do not allow any external hosting. Do you have any plans to allow self-hosting? It seems to work quite well for wordpress and ghost...
It's not quite clear to me what kind of features you have to "reduce isolation"? Also, how easy is it to integrate an existing web page design into labit?
Currently, all research group web pages are scattered across the web and we want to connect them, make them discoverable.
E.g.:
Let's say an undergraduate/graduate/researcher who wants to find all research groups/professors working in a certain field has to scour the web to find a handful of labs that are interesting to him. With Labit s/he will be able to filter all laboratories/research groups that might be interesting to him/her. And as user base grows the benefits of having all labs connected into a single network will yield even more benefits.
The above example is from personal experience of mine and my peers and the reason why we started to work on Labit. And there are many more similar examples that can be thought of.
Re Design:
Customization of the design is one of the top requested features. We are working on it. That being said one of the goals of the platform is to organize information in a structured way. We are still not sure how availability of deep customization will affect overall structure, ease of use and discoverabilty. This is something we are experimenting with. Locking down most of the structure and design of the web pages, while allowing minor customization might be a good thing in the long run.
I would love to hear your argument on adding advanced customization options.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your question is quite common among our first adopters. We have talked with representatives of a few universities. As of now they don't have any objections. However, we are working on clarifying this with other universities in US and Europe. In any case, the functionality that Labit currently offers doesn't pose a risk to individuals and research groups. Moreover, many labs host their pages on Wix, WordPress, SquareS…
10, since it is policy here to use a subdomain of the university. Of course, all data hosted on the lab website is usually not sensitive. But I know of a couple of unis where the policy is quite rigid and they simply do not allow any external hosting. Do you have any plans to allow self-hosting? It seems to work quite well for wordpress and ghost...
Can you tell me the name of your university? You can send me an email (rc[at]labit.io) if you would rather not share this information on HN.
And regarding custom domains. We are definitely working on that. It is our top priority right now.
It's not quite clear to me what kind of features you have to "reduce isolation"? Also, how easy is it to integrate an existing web page design into labit?
Re "reducing isolation": Currently, all research group web pages are scattered across the web and we want to connect them, make them discoverable. E.g.: Let's say an undergraduate/graduate/researcher who wants to find all research groups/professors working in a certain field has to scour the web to find a handful of labs that are interesting to him. With Labit s/he will be able to filter all laboratories/research gro…
This requires you to actually get "all the research groups" to migrate their sites to your platform, which would be difficult to achieve (particularly if you restrict them to a design they don't want).
I have strong reservations about your apparent aim of making a single for-profit company the gatekeeper to the websites for every research group.
An alternative way of making research groups discoverable would be to create a directory of researchers that links to their existing websites, rather than trying to replace them.
This avoids proprietary solutions like the one here and allows self hosting.
[1] https://attackllama.com/2015/10/online-labbooks-for-scientif...
What’s Labit? - Laboratory pages for research groups. Why Labit? - We want to bring research groups closer to each other, give them opportunity to establish connections and simplify collaboration. How Labit works? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJClMIWOh-M As it is with many ventures, Labit started out of frustration. We are a team of 4 people (2 researchers and 2 software engineers). We were frustrated that labor…
Creating and maintaining an informative page represents a substantial investment of time by laboratory personnel and the return on that investment is largely dependent on the durability of that information online.
Because laboratories tend to have longer life cycles than web projects, I am curious about Labit's model for achieving sustainability over a period of ten or more years.
What’s Labit? - Laboratory pages for research groups. Why Labit? - We want to bring research groups closer to each other, give them opportunity to establish connections and simplify collaboration. How Labit works? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJClMIWOh-M As it is with many ventures, Labit started out of frustration. We are a team of 4 people (2 researchers and 2 software engineers). We were frustrated that labor…
I would actually be interested to move our research groups website there. However, I'd first have to check with the Uni IT / security if it is allowed to host a website externally. This could be a general problem - did you look into University policies to see if this could be an often occuring issue?
Your question is quite common among our first adopters. We have talked with representatives of a few universities. As of now they don't have any objections. However, we are working on clarifying this with other universities in US and Europe. In any case, the functionality that Labit currently offers doesn't pose a risk to individuals and research groups. Moreover, many labs host their pages on Wix, WordPress, SquareS…
Might you consider a monthly fee and organize as a self-sustaining cooperative of researchers (https://platform.coop/)? For example, Stocksy is a cooperative owned by artists (https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/) and is profitable.