Lab: Yuri (Framed Planet)

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Visit: http://yuri.yup.la

Yuri is a project inspired by my personal fascination with space travel. On April 12, 2011, Google commemorated Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel to space and fly around the Earth in orbit. This project draws heavy inspiration from, and is at the same time, also, an attempt to praise the early beginnings of this great human feat. (You can watch the full length feature film on the astronaut in the "about" section of the application)

What motivated this project was a need to have an application that can save satellite images, in essence -- taking 'snapshots' of Earth from space

What motivated this project was a need to have an application that can save satellite images, in essence -- taking 'snapshots' of Earth from space, but by using Google Map's API (Application Programming Interface). 

A simple log-in mechanism is provided, standardizing on OAuth technology, where users can sign-in with their Twitter or Facebook log-in. This allows for faster access to the application's satellite image navigation and personal collection administration page. Without the need to have users create yet another set of log-in credential for another online service, the Twitter and Facebook access (with possibility for adding Google Apps, and other services in the near future, as well) allows for a minimum of complication, the user can simply use their already existing accounts. 

Some user's have voiced concern over the information accessed by this application from Twitter or Facebook. This information is minimal, and is already public. For example, we get: The name, nickname, id number from the provider and email. In some cases, a short bio, like the one from Twitter (this is also public information made available by the user for that service). No other information is gathered. Facebook, for example, always presents a screen with details about what type of information the application wants to gain access to; there is no such screen for this application because we do not try to access or interact with the user's Facebook account. Privacy is a major concern for us and we simply try to make the sing-up process as easy as possible.

Everyone is encouraged to participate

Once the user is singed-in, they can create new maps. Everyone is encouraged to participate, and new maps are shared by default on the 'index' page of the application. User's can view a collection of their own submitted maps by visiting the "My Maps" menu which appears once the user logs in. Shared maps can be made private instantly from this administration section. Previously created maps may also have their title edited, or deleted by the user. I hope that people will engage with this service and share their amazing found images with everyone.

The main focus of the application is to enable people to engage with their own fascination with the planet, and the technology which makes the very first sights from space, as experiences by cosmonaut Yuri, available to everyone via the web and through the Google Maps service. Thanks to Google Maps, pioneers in themselves for creating this widely available and useful service (for free), everyone can access these great images from space, of Earth. And now a person's favorite images can be saved and shared, thereby allowing for the creation of a collection of the most beautiful and interesting photos of Earth.

The concept of beauty and aesthetics enters and creates more value for the images collected through this application

By creating a platform for people to engage with the vast array of satellite photography, Yuri (Framed Planet) is an application that attempts to bring a 'curated' approach to navigating these images. By engaging users to 'take snapshots' of their favorite images of Earth, the concept of beauty and aesthetics enters and creates more value for the images collected through this application. This filters down the large quantity of un-mediated satellite photography to a few, but well framed, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, or otherwise fascinating images. 

Technology used:

  • Rails 3 (web development framework)
    • Geocoder gem (interfaces with google geocoder among other geo-coding services)
    • Omniauth gem (seamless authentication with third party service providers like Facebook and Twitter)
    • HAML (a subset or 'meta-markup-language' that is compiled into HTML)
    • SASS (same as for HAML but it is compiled into CSS)
  • Mongo DB (Database with geo-coding search capabilities)
  • Linode with Ubuntu 10.4 LTS (hosting VPS platform)
  • Capistrano (deployment)