More about Noteable

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I’ve recently tried to become a little more involved in the wider Jupyter community and I have to say that it’s the most amazing community to be part of and work with. We at the University of Edinburgh have already managed to get funding for our nbgrader workshop which has been a great excuse to introduce the University, myself and the Noteable service.

If you want to get involved, or even just be in on the discussions then first head over to Jupyter Discourse, secondly make sure to get in on the newly revived Jupyter Community meetings. The community is always full of interesting nuggets or information and with such a rapidly growing community there is always something new coming up. If you worry about not being able to keep up then I can highly advise the Tracking Jupyter Newsletter by Tony Hirst

Reviving Jupyter Community meetings. See you Tomorrow (Tuesday 26th) 9am PST: https://t.co/4kWO1VsgmE

— Project Jupyter (@ProjectJupyter) March 25, 2019

🎉 We started recording our monthly JupyterHub/Binder Team meetings. 🎉

If you couldn't make it to our meeting today, check out the video (with transcripts)!https://t.co/sPAPpXMKj5

— Zach Sailer (@zrsailer) March 21, 2019

Being involved in the community has already started to pay off with the following discovery, originally found on Discourse – https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/in-depth-comparison-of-cloud-based-services-that-run-jupyter-notebook/460/14

This is a great intro to what’s out there is the Jupyter ecosystem, a breakdown comparison of 6 services that allow you to run/share/preview Jupyter notebooks……but Oh Dear, Noteable isn’t on the list! Time to get our name up there with the big companies like Microsoft and Google. So here is my contribution to how Noteable compares, including some bonus points! Noteable is a service designed for use in educational institutions, currently looking for partners in the UK.

Supported languages:	Python 2.7, Python 3.5, Julia, R, Sage, Matlab, Calysto, Octave, Haskell (also able to install other languages by request!)
Ability to install packages:	Yes, for the duration of your session. Also we can install packages by request to avoid having to install them yourself (also we have a lot already – https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/code-libraries)
Interface similarity:	Uses Native Jupyter notebook interface
Keyboard shortcuts:	Uses all of the same keyboard shortcuts as Jupyter
Missing features:	None
Added features:	nbgrader (currently in Beta)built using Docker containers to allow you to switch between environments quickly by launching a new container.
Ease of working with datasets:	You can upload a dataset to your project from your local computer, and it can be accessed by any notebook.
Internet access:	Yes
Ability to work privately:	Yes
Ability to share publicly:	Not directly but you can use Git to share your repos or send notebooks manually.
Ability to collaborate:	Not currently
Ability to upgrade for better performance:	As a service designed for education there is no ‘free’ version but we do offer trial access to Noteable to institutions that are interested.
Documentation and technical support:	General documentation for integrating with your LMS via LTI is available. General introduction documentation to using Jupyter is currently being created.
Conclusion:	Noteable is the only service developed and designed for use in education, primarily further and higher education. We have already developed a working LTI connection to fit in with your LMS and work closely with our users to add features that are of the most benefit.

If what you see above sounds like something you would be interested in then feel free to get in touch and ask for a trial for your institution.

Extra

After following the original thread on Discourse and the Google Group there have been some extra questions raised:

– Jupyter Authenticator Support: Can it work with my organizations’ existing single sign on app? e g. 2FA, TOTP, the new Webauthn, GitHub, GitLab

Noteable can work with your institutions login, with a working LTI we can also directly connect with your LMS meaning that your users can be seamlessly logged in and also directed to specific course (which becomes important with our new Assignments)

– Mobile interface: Can any of the existing iOS and Android front ends connect to the system?

Directly from Noteable we do not offer our own App but I can say that we work on Juno, this is a paid App but does allow you to try some basic notebooks for free. They have also recently announced that they will be donating back a portion of their profits to Jupyter so a win all around.

I'm pleased to announce that from now on I will be donating 10% of all @junoclient sales proceeds to @ProjectJupyter. I highly admire their work, and hope that this (small) contribution will nevertheless prove valuable to Jupyter community!

— Alex Staravoitau (@alexstaravoitau) March 29, 2019

– Backups: How does the system backup work? How frequently, to where, and are there backups tested to make sure that they work?

Noteable auto-saves your work at regular intervals (every few minutes if you are making changes). You can also choose to save a Checkpoint if you think you might need to revert.