Hello everyone,

I was amazed to see this discussion, because I have been working on such a website for a while. OpenVisuals.org.
Though the website has a little different focus, it currently holds many components you mentioned here, like easy uploading, tagging, browse page with thumbnails, etc..
The main idea of OpenVisuals is to collect information visualization built with processing, and datasets from dataset owners (kind of swivel), and make it possible to mesh them on the website. A library that I am building (you can get info from the website) aims to help people developing visualizations, and also making them enabled to use with any dataset once they are uploaded on the website.
You can get more information on this part from the website, but to reference of what you have been talking, I have things working on the website such as:
- easy upload of a sketch: zip the applet folder - upload
- everyone has some kind of portfolio of their uploads
- comments
- source code access
- thumbnails (not auto-generated yet, seeking help on this)
- tags
- browse page with rss: you can subscribe to a tag's rss to see new uploads
- etc...

Since I started building this, I have been seeing quite an interest on seeing a generic (not visualization) version of this website. I am exploring the ways, though I still want to keep visualization portion at some part.

Please check the website, http://www.openvisuals.org and the blog about what's going on, http://www.openvisuals.org/blog
and I would love to hear any feedback on this issue. Upload couple of stuff, let me know what you think of the process. Can you see openvisuals a place to share any kind of stuff? If so what changes would you imagine? Also, anyone would be interested in collaborating on this, I would be happy to work together.

Let me know!

Best,
Sinan

Hey everyone,

Yesterday I had the chance to talk to Casey Reas face to face on the issue, after his talk in his exhibition in New York. He is happy to see such discussion and progress on the issue, and I hope soon I will get his feedback on OpenVisuals.org, and  we are going to explore the options to see if we can have it as an exhibition space for us. Also, I am working on it with Daniel Shiffman. Please, let me know any of your feedback under this topic. I am trying to see I take the visualization focus out of OpenVisuals. 'visualization' can just a tag in the website. But as of my thesis point, I would like to have the feature of matching datasets to visualizations somehow on the website. I will let you know, and please let me know what you think.
As of thumbnail uploading, I already have a question: I don't keep it obligatory to upload a thumbnail/screenshot, it can be done after uploading, but if the user doesn't do it, then they don't show up with a thumbnail in the browse page (www.openvisuals.org/browse). Currently, I am manually setting thumbnails for the visuals uploaded, but I am seeking ways to auto-generate thumbnails. Any ideas?

Honestly, I wonder as I listen to this if WordPress couldn't just be the basis. That's what we're working on for CDM (createdigitalmotion.com + createdigitalmusic.com), using WordPress MU. I'm all for special features, special views, etc., but there's no reason that can't just use something like WP for the backend. and with plug-ins, etc., you can support code with proper formatting and such.

Maybe what we're talking about, too, is the ability to properly tag code even on people's personal blogs. So there's already a lot of great stuff getting posted to existing blogs, a whole lot of which are powered by WP, too.

Maybe what we need is a plug-in that takes care of code formatting and tagging/metadata and adds some additional community features. Everything we're developing for CDM -- where anyone would want to use it, anyway -- we plan on open sourcing, so I'm happy to contribute.

WordPress format would be very interesting, since many people know how to use and post stuff using WordPress, but I have never been too much into wordpress tweaking, I couldn't imagine how time based posting system would be a suitable solution. Though I know wordpress would be formatted in many different ways, so any ideas?
Embedding option to any webpage was something I am working on lately on OpenVisuals, but I've never thought of doing a plugin for wordpress, and the idea is terrific! I know many people are exhibiting their pieces on their websites and blogs, and such an option would be great. I didn't built any plugins for WP before, so I might seek for help on that.