Category Archives: information technology

There is an increasing number of near-real-time sensors like webcams out in SRKW habitat. In an effort to keep abreast of these resources (as a community), you can now access and modify my list of favorite sensors for monitoring orca habitat in the Orcasphere wiki. This is primarily a list of web cams and environmental sensors like weather buoys and satellite images. Used in conjunction with the real-time sounds from Salish Sea hydrophone network, I hope these tools will help us keep track of where the whales are relative to risks (like passing oil tankers), how they’re doing, and what’s going on in their habitat (whether they’re around or not).

I’ve recently been enjoying using Google calendar for sharing events and schedules with other organizations and project members.  Here is a fledgling prototype of an embedded “Orcasphere” calendar that could enable us to pool all orca-relevant education and research activities in a single interface.

http://www.orcasphere.net/calendar/

You can also get there using the “Calendar” tab in the header…

The web site is currently undergoing a renovation and migration. To save money and support open-source software, we are moving away from squarespace.com and to a Word Press installation on dreamhost.com servers. General blog articles from http://beamreach.squarespace.com, some images, and the public library will migrate here, while Beam Reach student blogs will go to http://beamreach.org/blog

Our new platform will enable us to experiment with additional collaborative tools, like a bulletin board, content management systems, photo galleries, wiki, and more. We are also piloting a reputation system within Word Press developed by SezWho.com