You can use any operating system and different web browsers. Thus whether you are at work, at home, on vacation, at a conference, or just away from all of your "stuff", you can always access your information and update it as long as you can find the world wide web!

Our development/testing team has in it indivduals with strong prefernces in working with Macs and Linux. Therefore, Mac and Linux compatibility were not an afterthought in our software development: they were part of the inspiration.

Our product was designed to serve the complex and diverse computing preferences of the research and academic communities. The goal of sharing data, even between our team members, requires that we remain very aware of compatibility issues across Windows, Mac and Linux users.

We purposefully do not rely on client side software to minimize compatibility issues and insure that you can access your information from the platform of your choosing. The system also goes beyond standard platforms and was tested on iPod (see our Tutorial for more info) and Palm Treo.

We recommend Mozilla Firefox as your browser but we have also tested e-nnovate e-notebook with Internet Explorer and Safari.

llustrative Case #1:The Researching Mom

After returning from Maternity leave, Susan returns to continue her thesis project. She finds her colleagues extremely supportive and her advisor very understanding of her schedule. He tells her that she can arrange her schedule around the new baby, as long as she "gets the work done".

She finds that on Mondays and Wednesdays she can drop her son off at her sister's who does not work during those days. On fridays her husband returns home at lunch time and can take care of the baby during that time. So she decides that she will come to lab and perform her experimental work during those days and will work on her thesis and papers at home.

At first this seems like a very plausible idea. However, she quickly discovers that it is very hard for her to work at home. For one thing, to analyze her data and protocols she needs all of her experimental results. But the the lab-tech who performs the histology on the animals also needs her lab notebook, and so do the undergraduates who are helping her with her project. Also, much of the data remains on the computer at work and she often forgets to transfer it to her thumb-drive.

Outcome:
Susan begins organizing her experimental protocols and results on line. She uploads her data files into her on-line labnotebook, where she can access it at home using her laptop or desktop depending on where in the house she wants to work.

Once she has the opportunity to go back to work, she can just access it from any computer at work and continue her experiments. She also does not have to fight over access to her lab notebook. Her students and the laboratory tech all can access her work and add entries corresponding to their results. She can even go to her sister's house and access her work, while her niece babysits

llustrative Case #2: An Opportunity at a Conference

Lee attends a topic specific conference in Singapore with his advisor, where he is to present the work that he performed last summer. He brings with him a CD of his presentation as well as a back-up in a USB "Thumb Drive" just in case there is a problem.

After giving his presentation, his advisor introduces him to a very prominent researcher who is impressed by his presentation, but wants to know more about what has been done in their group in the past six month. This figure is an important possible collaborator and it is to the interest of both Lee and his advisor that they impress him and strike while the iron is hot. He comments as he leaves that he looks forward to talking to him some more during the informal discussion sessions after dinner, shakes both him and his advisors hands and leaves.

The advisor asks Lee if he has "Any of that new data" and "that graph you showed me the other day". Lee has a few hours to find a way to get his hands on a piece of data that he had not counted on needing at all during this conference. He is stuck in a different time-zone in desperate need of access to his scientific work.

Outcome:
Lee has stored his data and all of the graphs he plans to present at lab-meetings in an e-nnovate lab notebook. He finds an internet enabled machine, that albeit old has web access. He creates a portfolio containing some of his observations as well as the important graphs that he thinks will impress the collaborator.He is able to create a viewable document and download it to his thumb-drive, as well as print it to a laser-printer at the business office of the hotel.

By the time dinner rolls around, he greets both his advisor and the collaborator with documents containing specifically what they are interested and offers to have the data directly downloaded into his collaborators laptop. The collaborator, having the graphs, references and data is very impressed, and instead of getting a standard "e-mail me" tells Lee that he is very excited about helping with his project and that he should arrange a meeting once they return to the U.S.

Just $9.95 a month (academic $4.95)