Narrated screencast of Phinch now posted online

A video screencast of the Phinch data visualization framework is now available on Vimeo! This narrated walkthrough explains how to prepare files and upload data, and gives a tour of the visualization features currently available (including the ability to export images, share data with collaborators, and download log files).

Phinch data visualization framework – screencast and live demo from Holly Bik on Vimeo.

We’ve also been working hard to expand the GitHub wiki for Phinch (https://github.com/shujianbu/Phinch/wiki) – here you can find screenshots and suggested uses of each visualization, specific instructions on metadata formatting, and full details of our code implementation (libraries used, how to carry out a local installation). Let us know if there’s anything else you’d like to see included in this wiki – and as always, please feel free to report any bugs or feature requests on our GitHub issue tracker.

Phinch Github repo now public

Our code repository on Github is now public! View it here: https://github.com/shujianbu/Phinch

Users can now fork the repo, or post issues: https://github.com/shujianbu/Phinch/issues We’ll be tracking all these issues, fixing bugs, and closing tickets. For users that want to push features or fix code, submit a pull request, and we will approve changes after review. In the next few days we’ll also be putting up extensive documentation and tutorials on our Github wiki.

We will soon release an archived, stable code package (beta v1.0) with a citable DOI, via the Zenodo project. In the meantime, please cite the Phinch framework as follows:

Bik, H.M., Bu, S., Grubbs, W. (manuscript in preparation) Phinch: An interactive, exploratory data visualization framework for environmental sequence data https://github.com/shujianbu/Phinch

Data visualization for environmental studies – talk at JASM 2014

We were delighted to take part in a recent session at the Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Portland, OR (May 18-23, 2014), entitled “Environmental DNA applications for aquatic ecosystems“. @hollybik discussed the potential of Phinch visuals for environmental monitoring, bioassessment, and aquatic research.

Many thanks to session organizers Erik Pilgrim (US EPA), Eric Stein (Southern California Coastal Water Research Project), and Mehrdad Hajibabaei (University of Guelph) for the invitation to speak.

Our slides from the JASM 2014 talk are posted on Figshare (embedded below). Includes screenshots of recent updates to the user interface!

Phinch demo and poster at VIZBI 2014

After months of development, we finally unveiled the Phinch framework at this year’s Visualizing Biological Data (VIZBI) conference in Heidelberg, Germany (March 5-7, 2014).

@hollybik presented a poster about the project and gave a live software demo. You can view our visual abstract over on the VIZBI meeting site, or download a PDF of our poster from Figshare (embedded below).