blog

OB3-v2.0

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 04:56:59 +1300

OB3 (version 2) will be released in June. This major release will move us closer to our long term vision for OB3. Additional information will be posted over coming weeks, as we count down to the release. Please use the "signup" link at ob3.cc, email to support@oceanbrowser.com or follow us on Facebook if you would like to be kept informed.

Recent Updates for OB3

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:14:27 +1300

The OB3 team are currently hard at work on the next major release of OB3. But in parallel we have been rolling out organic improvements for the production release of OB3. Please also check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for the latest information on OB3.

Here's a summary of feature updates over the last few months: (i) a table object for documents: create, edit and format text in tables within OB3; (ii) folder view - customise "cover sheet" information for folders and allow users to navigate their content. In upcoming releases we will add content summarisation features to folder view to show updates to content in subdocuments. We've also added a cookie trail to the top of documents to show you exactly where a document you are viewing is located in the folder structure, making it easier to navigate through related content; (iii) podcast media from documents to iTunes with one click - we've added a new podcasting/RSS feed option to the documents; (iv) reference specific content in documents. In OB3 every document element has its own unique identity - these now have their own URL, allowing you to link not only to documents but to specific point in a document where content is located. Email notifications to discussions use this feature - following links from discussion emails will navigate you to the appropriate content in OB3; (v) Powerpoint to OB3 converter plugin. Convert PPT presentations to OB3 along with their media such as movies, images, and audio commentaries. Converted presentations can be dragged into OB3; and(v) basic support for Internet Explorer 8 browser in OB3 app. IE8 was previously only supported using OB3 reader.

OB3 beta 4 released

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:43:54 +1300

We're excited to announce the release of OB3 beta 4, the web application for online study. OB3 is the result of over 3 years of research and development, we're committed to improving the way graduate and professional education is delivered online.

Significant features of this release include:

Document sharing: share OB3 files or folders with colleagues, or publish to groups & courses with options to control what people can do within your content.
Discussions: all OB3 documents now support discussions which are attached to any element within a document.
OB3 Powerpoint (PPT) converter (Windows) - Migrate your PPT content into OB3 with a single click converter. Supports multimedia presentations with video, audio, annotated images. Flexible options control how your presentation is converted. Perfect for converting Medical PPT presentations to OB3.
Export/Import: backup your OB3 documents for an offline copy of your work (saves as XML).
Document history: all changes to documents are recorded. Use the history menu to review changes or undo mistakes. History is available on each element within a document (e.g. a paragraph) as well as the whole document.
In-browser audio recording. From the element control bar select More -> Audio, then click the Microphone tab. Record audio and upload directly into OB3 without any additional software (other than Flash).
Many minor enhancements (such as support for superscript and subscript), layout improments, help message improvements, printing, linking between OB3 documents.
Support for Chrome Frame for older Internet Explorer browsers.

Earlier releases of OB3 provided:

A fully featured multimedia document authoring editor.
Intuitive editing features: click on anything in your document to edit, your changes are saved as you work.
Copy and paste compatability between web pages, MS Word documents and OB3. Use copy and paste to import text with ease.
Support for a wide variety of modern web browsers.
Drag and drop integration between the desktop and OB3 in your browser: add files, images, videos etc to your documents via drag and drop.

Rodney Tamblyn | CEO & Founder | oceanbrowser.com email: rodney at oceanbrowser.com

ob3 beta 2 released

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:26:27 +1300

I am delighted to announce the release of OB3 (beta 2). Today is a significant step towards delivering on our commitment to transform the way graduate education is delivered, by supporting online study, collaboration, content creation and publication.

OB3 beta 2 is the first of several releases over coming months. Today's release provides a multimedia document editor for students and staff to easily create rich study documents online.

OB3 has been designed for busy people. It assumes no prior knowledge other than the ability to edit a document and browse the web. This means that everyone can feel at home in OB3 and be productive with next to no training. Use copy and paste or drag and drop to easily import content into OB3.

Most important though is what we leave out: the difficulty associated with typical elearning tools.

For our existing customers, we will begin issuing you with accounts for login at http://ob3.oceanbrowser.com

Interested in checking OB3 out? Please sign up for the public beta at http://ob3.cc

Rodney Tamblyn

CEO | oceanbrowser.com

The attentive amongst you will have noticed…

Fri, 13 May 2011 13:42:34 +1200

Our regular readers will see that a new OceanBrowser site is up and running. The one you are looking at now.

We promise to stay true to our goal of being useful and easy to use.

Feedback is most welcome.

Dragon’s Den. Done.

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:41:29 +1200

Well, we did our Dragon’s Den session with NZTE’s hardened external advisors (see February’s entry). In our quiet kiwi way we are pretty rapt with the feedback. They told us to be much bolder in pursuing growth; that there is a massive opportunity for OceanBrowser to move into new niches.

It’s an eternal question for all growing businesses – whether to continue along in a steady and comfortable way or to go all out for global megacorp status. Clearly there’s a risk/reward dynamic, even if the risk/reward ratio is hard to know.

People who use products like OB3 put a lot of trust in the application as there’s so much riding on it for them. Whatever we do as a business has to honour the fact that our users come first.

RunRev Keynote features OB3

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:35:41 +1200

We use RunRev’s LiveCode for prototyping new features, and supporting educator-created interative content, so we’re stoked that RunRev CEO Kevin Miller highlighted OB3 in his keynote at this month’s global developer's conference, RunRevLive held in San Jose. The live and online audience is in the thousands and, as many LiveCode developers are in education, this is an important group of people for us.

LiveCode makes it easy to write once and deploy to many platforms, including iOS and Android (which is great for us as we bring in mobile support). We've used it internally for prototyping new features during the development process of OB3.

Kevin's presentation highlighted our seamless integration of Livecode web content, and how simple it is for academic developers to take their innovative interactive content online with OB3.

OB3 private beta

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:32:18 +1300

We’ve just released the private beta of OB3, our online learning environment for medical education. We’re pretty happy about this, but there is lots more to do.

Running now are many of the key features for document creation and editing – drag and drop, save, copy and paste etc. The UI needs work as we’re pretty fussy about giving users what they need. Next come collaboration features built into the document view. Then re-factoring to Ext JS 4. Then onwards and upwards!

We'd love to have you in our first public beta, so please sign-up now if you haven't already, and while you are at it, you might like to join our social media groups on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Into Australia with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:30:16 +1300

We’ve just found out OceanBrowser has just been selected to be part of the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Path to Market programme for Australia in 2011. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise is the export development agency for the New Zealand Government.

This is exciting for us as there are many more opportunities in Australia than New Zealand to support online learning in medicine. We’re going to be in Melbourne and Sydney many times this year meeting people and showing off OB3.

Unfortunately, NZTE puts us through the wringer to get there: seminars on tax and HR issues in Australia make getting out of bed hard. We also have a dragon’s den-type session with a couple of key external advisors to NZTE. We hope they will be kind.

Happy holidays from OceanBrowser

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 13:19:26 +1300

For us in New Zealand, Christmas and the New Year is a time for a summer holiday. It is also time to overlook the weirdness of New Zealanders celebrating a traditional Christmas with turkey and Santa in a furry suit.

I am off to find some sun and summer fruit in my hometown of Roxburgh. You will jealous to know that my brother still runs the family cherry orchard.

I wish you a happy holiday and best wishes for the New Year. It promises to be a big year for OceanBrowser.

OceanBrowser starts searching for a search engine. Gets first hit.

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:16:22 +1300

As we extend the functionality of OB3, we are partnering with Dr Andrew Trotman at the University of Otago for a trial integration of the University’s ATIRE search engine.

Working with ATIRE allows us to refine the search algorithms, giving a custom search experience for OB3 based on users’ actual requirements. Our expectation is that users will get fast and accurate search across all OB3 content types.

Andrew has an interesting background, including as co-founder and CTO of BioMedNet and ChemWeb, early digital libraries successfully sold to Elsevier, and co-Chair of INEX, an international academic search consortium. He clearly knows his apples.

Given there is no shortage of search engines, and some very popular ones; it will be interesting to see how a custom implementation stacks up. We’ll keep you posted here on how we get on.

Health Informatics New Zealand conference

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:10:55 +1300

HINZ is the leading New Zealand conference for those interested in the connection between IT and health. There are lots of talks – some interesting and some, well, the title isn’t enough to get us in the door – and a lots of vendors showing off their wares. And like Health-e-Nation, there are lots of academics and health managers, and a smattering of clinicians.

It seemed like the issue of 2010 was what to do with mobile. Vendors have pushed mobile devices on the health system for years – the Intel tablet, for example – but it seems with the iPhone and iPad there are a couple of products that clinicians are willingly taking up. The big health IT vendors selling enterprise scale software now have to deal with a critical mass of influential users that want computing on the go, and they can’t just rely on porting their legacy systems to make new sales.

Throw in new models like shared care plans, patient-centred care and primary care prevention and it feels like a new paradigm is emerging. Something interesting is going to happen here. Exactly what, well who really knows? Of course OB3 will be on iOS very soon.

OceanBrowser Wins! Otago Business Awards

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:12:36 +1300

Breaking news! OceanBrowser has won the Research and Innovation award at the 2010 Otago Business Awards (official awards list - pdf). This is a great fillip for the OceanBrowser team and testament to our decision to push technical boundaries.

The Otago Business Awards recognize excellence in Otago-based businesses. We were really pretty happy to be in the same awards as cool companies like TracMap and PocketSmith.

And a small admission – we entered the Design category, but ended up winning Science and Innovation. One day we will win the overall award.

Many thanks to Westpac and the Otago Chamber of Commerce for sponsoring the awards.

OceanBrowser wins competitive funding with SiliconCoach and HPS - mobile collaboration

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:20:35 +1300

OceanBrowser, working with the High Performance Sport NZ (supported by Sport and Recreation New Zealand) and SiliconCoach, has been awarded an industry development grant by the Dunedin City Council. As a group we're going to collaboratively work together to build technologies we all can leverage. See coverage here in the Otago Daily Times.

Our first project together will be to develop a mobile application to allow experts (such as sports coaches, or medical staff) to participate in online collaborative discussions using voice and audio. We believe there is a strong desire for alternative ways for busy professional to participate and contribute online.

We’re rapt to be working with HPS and Siliconcoach. Both provide web applications for learning and both project teams are based here in Dunedin, so there are definite prospects for creating some real expertise in the development and use of video annotation.

The mobile collaboration tool will be released with OB3, so keep an eye out for this in 2011.

New Zealand Health IT Cluster delegation to Health-e-Nation conference in Sydney

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:08:51 +1200

As we wrote in an earlier post, OceanBrowser was part of a delegation of New Zealand health IT companies to the Health-e-Nation conference in Sydney. This was an opportunity to get OB3 in front of a new crowd and we met some great people from Geisinger in the US, the Australian College of Health Informatics, NEHTA and of course our New Zealand compatriots.

There are close ties between Australia and New Zealand in medical education and, in fact, Save Sight Institute students enroll in University of Otago courses. So Australia is a natural market for us and we are keen to pursue our chances there. Distance delivery is an obvious option for Australian institutions but we learnt that in Sydney you don’t have to be in a remote site to make distance learning modes worthwhile – in the big cities, travel times and travel hassle make features like document sharing and teleconferencing very tenable.

This all made us think there’s another opportunity for OceanBrowser here: that any course with time-starved professionals would benefit from our goal of bringing content and collaboration together. Distance is relative.

University of Sydney Seminar

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:06:20 +1200

The Save Sight Institute at the University of Sydney and OceanBrowser just ran a half-day seminar for University of Sydney staff interested in the practical elements of delivering postgraduate education by distance. The institute has been using OB2 successfully since 2003 for their distance Masters courses in ophthalmology, so they know what they’re talking about both with OB products and distance education.

What was really confirmed for us was that postgraduate medical education really pushes the boundaries for software providers and OB3 is on the right track by responding to this.

Registrars told us they would typically study – in one day – using seven different computers at work, a mobile while commuting and another computer at home. Do they really want to start each session at a homepage, or do they want to log-in to the same screen they logged out of? OB3 will do the latter.

With content, the boundaries are being broken. The students saw little value in separate systems for course material, forums, email and so on. The students are bright, hardworking professionals and their own contributions are as important to their colleagues as the prescribed course content. They want all the different types of information they use and contribute to be organised in one place. And that’s what they’ll get with OB3.

health-e-nation

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:02:45 +1200

Well, we’re off to Sydney in early September to give a seminar at the University of Sydney on our experiences with distance learning and to meet new people at the Health-e-Nation conference. We’re attending the conference as part of a New Zealand Health IT Cluster delegation looking for new business in Australia.

We’ll report soon on what we get up to – well, maybe not everything.

Thanks to the DCC for supporting our travel and to NZTE for their support of the Health IT Cluster.

tech-nz

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 13:01:35 +1200

We’re over the moon with recent news that TechNZ – the New Zealand Government’s business R&D funder – will support the development of OB3. The funding is to help with some of the ‘technical stretch’ features in OB3 and it will help us deploy them more quickly into the market.

It’s been an interesting experience working with TechNZ and their local rep, the Dunedin City Council’s Economic Development Unit. As is usual, there’s definitely an element of reading the tea leaves of the funding application itself. What do they really mean in section 2? Is the detail key, or are they really more interested in the story underlying it? But Ross at the DCC and Joseph at TechNZ have been approachable and clear about interpreting this for us.

Some businesses say they can’t be bothered with funding applications as they take too long and are too complex. I reckon it’s well worth it – and a lot less effort for a small company than generating the same amount of sales.

An important agreement with Otago’s Health Sciences Division

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:32:59 +1300

OceanBrowser has closed an important agreement with its major customer, the Health Sciences Division of the University of Otago. OceanBrowser and Health Sciences will work together to align their web application development so that OB3 integrates with Bella, the Division's new framework for web apps.

We’re pleased this is a two-way win: OB3 will be more visible to possible new customers, and Bella starts the journey of interfacing with other systems. Bella is based on the Zend Framework and the Dojo toolkit, so has some pretty robust projects under the hood. We expect Bella to be open source soon: check out www.bellabuilder.net for updates.

This agreement is proof of the value OceanBrowser has delivered to Health Sciences over the last six years and a sign of our commitment to each other. Many thanks to John, Jesse and Jeremy at Health Sciences for all their help.