The current version of the SOM Toolbox is 1.0beta. In the near future we'll concentrate on debugging the code. After we consider the software package to be sufficiently stable, we'll release version 1.0. No plans have been made about when this will happen.
In addition to debugging the code, we'll probably end up changing some functions a bit, and adding some new ones. Some of these functions will end up in the version 1.0, and some will go to the contrib package along with anything you might want to send us. In the following are some of the ideas we have had:
We have tried to optimize the algorithms for Matlab primarily by using as much matrix calculations and as few loops as possible. One way of still faster performance could be to make *.mex functions for the purpose.
We plan to make some basic tools for dealing with local data sets, ie. sets of data collected from the Voronoi plates of individual map units. The local data sets can be analysed or used otherwise, e.g. to model the data using local models.
Many data sets are intimately linked to real world locations. To be able to show the information extracted by the SOM on a map would be very beneficial.
Also you can take part in the development process by sending us your comments and suggestions to somtlbx@mail.cis.hut.fi.
Contributions and add-ons (and links/references to them) are of course very welcome. If you wish, you can retain full copyrights to your code. Such contributions are distributed as separate files so that they are not part of the Toolbox package itself, but still can be found from this same place.