I’ve used several versions of Microsoft Office Project over the years, and though it has improved, it still requires Microsoft Windows. Always on the lookout for a strong project management entry in the Macintosh market, I believe I’ve found two: OmniPlan and Merlin2.

If you want to create ‘logical, manageable project plans with Gantt charts, schedules, summaries, milestones, and critical paths’, on your Macintosh, OminPlan might be a good choice. It sports a Macintosh user-friendly interface and comes from the same company that developed the great Visio compatible diagramming application OmniGraffle.

Merlin2 is a second generation project management tool for the Macintosh. Despite its marketing claiming ‘project management with a bit of magic’, it appears to be a high-end tool. Though less approachable than OmniPlan, it may be more capable. In addition to traditional project management tools, Merlin2 adds document management for administrative or organizational files. Merlin2 supports Agile Project Management methods and provides a ‘Library’ to define, store, and reuse plan activities:

+ Define your iterations just once, then drag and drop this into the Library.
+ Now you can easily drag this iteration out of the Library and drop it onto any required position in your project.
+ All the attributes of the activities, even the allocated resources, costs, and other information do not need to be entered again.

A disappointment (I share with many) is the lack of support for collaboration. These tools are quite capable of creating documents for meetings and reports, though less capable communicating with team members. Collaboration is described as ‘importing and exporting popular formats’. Merlin2 allows publishing reports to WebDAV servers. For example, calendar events could be published to WebDAV servers and subscribed to by members.

This top down push produces static documents the team can read. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to allow team members to participate in creation, curation, and execution of the plan? This appears beyond the scope of current tools.

When we posed the question to The Omni Group, we received an immediate and encouraging response:

OmniPlan doesn’t have any network collaboration features right now because for version 1, we really wanted to focus on getting the core features and functionality working well before we added any additional complexities.

A lot of users have requested this network collaboration, so we are definitely considering all the possible ways to implement this feature in a later version of OmniPlan. I’ll add a vote to this request in our database for you.

If you have any other questions or suggestions about OmniPlan, please let us know. We really appreciate it!

Sincerely,

Aaron Kwong
Support Ninja
The Omni Group

The Merlin support-team responded:

As Merlin 2 is currently a single-user license this is indeed the current workflow. You can also place Merlin on a common server where your team can access the projects however, only one person at a time can open, view and edit it. You will be glad to hear that we are working on a multi-user function, which will allow teams to work in a network environment. This is planned for implementation by the end of summer 2007.

Furthermore, we are also developing a web module, which will allow people to access the project and edit it over the web. This will be a separate module and we hope to have in released within this year.

If you have any further queries regarding Merlin just drop us an email. We’ll be glad to help.

Best regards from Germany,
Merlin Support-Team

Encouraging!

That said, both tools presently integrate into the Macintosh desktop, communicating with iCal and AddressBook. One will support the development of our data center migration plan. I’ll let you know when I choose and why.

I’d be interested to hear if you have any experience with these tools.

(See also: OminPlan )
(See also: Merlin2 )

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond. To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process.

(URL: http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php )

In preparation for our data center migration to WBOB we anticipate consolidating services, systems, and storage. (WBOB is an on-campus co-location facility.) The purpose of this plan is to reduce complexity of our environment for both our users and support team.

This move requires condensing 1300 square feet of racks and systems into 80 square feet.

Server consolidation is perhaps the single most effective move we can make to decrease the complexity of our environment. This consolidation will demand fewer albeit more capable systems able to provide virtualized systems for research and services. Consolidation allows us to de-commission as many as twelve of our legacy systems, many as old as eight years of age. Savings include fewer physical systems, lower power and cooling requirements, and better overall system utilization for better return on investment (ROI).

The current piecemeal approach to storage architecture is no-longer sustainable. Purchase of a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device partitions our systems from data. This allows systems to become interchangeable and considerably easier to maintain. Currently we require at least 8TB of space to service existing systems. A new storage architecture will need to begin by accommodating current requirements and allow us to expand in a predictable method as our needs grow.

A NAS device installed in the the WBOB center, prior to our move, would allow us to migrate our data before we migrate hardware systems. This protects data from storage hardware failure during the move and limits the time our customers are without their data and our services. Combined with consolidation of service systems this should allow us to de-commission many old systems in-place.

To recap, here are the main points:

Consolidation of services
+ fewer physical systems
+ reduced support costs for old machines
+ de-commissioning old systems in-place
+ lower power and cooling requirements
+ better overall system utilization for better return on investment(ROI)


Improved storage architecture
+ consolidates current storage scheme
+ partition systems from data
+ systems become interchangeable and easier to maintain
+ protected data migration to WBOB
+ predictable expansion

MIT has developed a JAVA application for tracking friends by their WiFi network connection and projecting those locations on a campus map. iFind provides user level location awareness. Knowing where your friends are will enable collaborative tools and colleagues to communicate, work, and play together. From the site:

iFIND, a project developed at the MIT SENSEable City Lab, aims to improve social networking through some kind of digitally augmented serendipity. Using iFIND, you and your buddies can instantaneously exchange your locations on campus, talk to users nearby, and microcoordinate more effectively. If you are a geek, you will even be able to arrange meetings in real time using the group’s center of gravity!

Interesting questions concerning personal privacy and user tracking come to mind. It is not entirely clear how much control over this information is left with the user. On the brighter side, can you imagine having this access to cellphone data? You could locate all your family members at a glance. This could also be a valuable tool for tracking people and hard assets in a hospital system or corporate facility. Is the singularity near for collaboration convergence?

The client software is available for download under the GPL. The server software is not available as it ‘does not use any GPL code’. Copies of the client/server protocol documentation are available from MIT by request.

(See: iFind at MIT)
(See also: Trainspotting (1996))

Drew Berry, from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Victoria, Australia, has tied for first prize in the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge conducted by the journal Science and the US National Science Foundation.

The prize was announced in September 2006 but the animation and supporting paper “Molecular Animation of Cell Death Mediated by the Fas Pathway” are now available on the web and in the April 2007 issue of Science. The description reads:

The movie shows the events from activation of the death receptor through degradation of the actin cytoskeleton using molecular representations based on the known crystal structures of the proteins or macromolecular structures involved in the process. The magnification at each stage is provided and represents cellular views at 5,000 and 8,000 and an intracellular or molecular view at 10,000,000 to visualize the proteins and molecular complexes. Readers are referred to the suggested reading list in the full text for the articles used to create the movie.

This movie would be useful in the context of a cell biology course, developmental biology course, or immunology course to illustrate the process of death receptor-mediated apoptosis. In addition, this movie could be used in a biochemistry course or structural biology course to illustrate the formation of macromolecular complexes involved in enzyme activation or signal transduction.

The biology is fascinating and Berry offers support for the biology in the ‘Suggested Reading’. I would also like to learn about his animation tools and computational methods for rendering the videos.

I may appear relaxed, though on the cellular level I’m quite busy.

Citation: D. Berry, Molecular Animation of Cell Death Mediated by the Fas Pathway. Sci. STKE 2007, tr1 (2007).

( Click here to access the paper. | Click here to play the movie.)