Topic: Another bunch of fixes loaded this week
Topic type:
Now, it would be easy to think not much has been happening on the Kete front in the last few weeks - Not so! On the programming side of things Walter has been busy refining the way Kete works, mostly on the administration side, but a big change made to searching. Previously a search was limited to 2 words but the rapid growth of the database meant we had to do some work here - and fast! The search facilty can now take any number of keywords. Boolean operators can now be used to structure a search string more effectively ie quote marks to identify phrases with and / or / not. I have been busy completing grant applications. We are committed to releasing Kete 1.0 to the world and will find the money somewhere I am sure. We know of 3 or 4 big projects in New Zealand which could happen if Kete 1.0 gets released soon enough. I am also having thoughts about setting up a Paypal account and emailing everyone I know and asking for a small donation for the Kete cause; if 10,000 people gave $10 each we'd have money to spare ... and the world is a big place! I reckon we even do a $100k in 100 hrs ! If each person flicked a convincing email to only 10 other people encouraging them to donate, it would only be 5 removes from the top. I would be interested in hearing any thoughts on this concept of fundraising for Kete. It is hard for organisations to donate to a worthy project, but as individuals it is easy to donate the price of a couple of cups of coffee! Content creation is ploughing on: genealogical data from a family tree, transcribing a diary from a pioneer housewife, indexing a jubillee supplement, uploading scanned minutes of Maori Land Court minutes plus transcriptions, taking and loading in photographs of houses to link up with historical images of the same properties 100 years ago. We now have 8000 digital images, over 800 topics and 500 documents. My next big job is to completely rewrite the online help manual. We have learnt so much over the last month. Walter has built in a bunch or really powerful editing tools and Pippa and Trevor Heath (a Kete user we have never met) are experimenting and doing some pretty cool stuff.
