Weekly Update on Museums, Tech, Social-Media etc - Tracky Cat Purse Mobile or cloud

This post is a bit longer than usual as my holiday in Thailand revolved round eating, swimming and sleeping and very little in the way of anything else. I went with high hopes of working on some really pithy blog posts on mobile browsing v apps and museum work flows - but got completely sidetracked by nothing. The picture above was taken at Karon Bay, Thailand, reminded me of how simple offerings could be.

First Up like everyone else I have been paddling in the Pintrest pool see http://pinterest.com/grbarker/. While there are some really good potential uses for Museums it is also a bit clunky at the moment. Particularly the flatness of the the search engine function. I also think that while 'following' text-rolls works in twitter your 'following' pictures in pintrest quickly become chaotic and hard to read (particularly if you are seeking community feedback) - I would like to see the option of being able to feed followers pins into particular boards which I can create. As to content I think museums would be well advised to look at what people are interested in first before jumping in and creating boards based on the museums ideas. Apparently 70% of the demographic currently 18 – 44 females and there is an amazing consistancy across in this demographic about the boards they create - it's all about Animals, Home Renovation, Clothes, Cookery, Makeup, Colours and Patterns, Books. The other 30% mainly men from the same demographic appear equally consistant in their boards which revolve mainly around Home Renovation, Music, Cookery, Gadgets, Colours and Patterns.

Tracky Task Management - This is an interesting new startup which allows you work online by pulling together a wide variety of tasks like email, chat, task collab & file sharing into a private or public workspace. After creating groups tasks can be arranged around Tracks which can be used with a calender, chat, attach files and sub tracks. I signed up and while it has lots of potential its interface with groups and tracks was a little confusing. Othwerwise potentially a very useful working tool for team working publicly or privately - free online reg @ https://tracky.com/

Purse made out of a cat - creepy, but also fascinating: What Tinkebell did with her cat Pinkeltje she broke the neck of her sick cat and then made a handbag of her skin. The project was an artwork entitled My dearest cat and launched a discussion about hypocrisy. We simultaneously keep animals both as part of our families and as a commodity to be consumed. She uploaded a manual in which I described step by step "how to kill your cat", and how to turn it into a bag.

In a matter of days her mailbox was flooded with violent threats and death wishes which are now published in her new book - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/20/online-anonymity-death-threats

Five SEO Blogs - Some of the highest ranked Search Engine Optimisation blogs - http://searchengineland.com/ - http://www.seobook.com/blog - http://www.seomoz.org/blog - http://searchenginewatch.com - http://www.toprankblog.com/

500px is a photo community that lets you discover, share, buy and sell inspiring photographs. The first version of 500px came to light in the early days of digital photography. The 500px platform went through a number of revisions and changes, growing together with technology and photographers, and keeping focus on the highest quality photos. http://500px.com/

It's The Vinyl Countdown The Quietus is one of my favourite music magazines and if you like music this is a great read. Artists, from Jerry Dammers and Stewart Lee to Neneh Cherry, Aidan Moffat and Maria Minerva tell a story about their most treasured records. ... a flexi disc which was given away free with the legendary original punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue. This is a song by the editor of that magazine Mark Perry's band Alternative TV, entitled ‘Love Lies Limp’. It wasn't just the Woolworth's cod reggae ... http://thequietus.com/articles/08539-record-store-day-my-favourite-vinyl

Educators Book Collection Recommendations at My Resource Cloud

Software for Digital Collections - an open document which is crowdsourcing a list of software available for use in managing and distributing Digital Collection resources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ppg1_qfF73x0qDIFWrR37DF3ELGD1GAFsVjcxIYdDbo/edit

In The Mobile Frontier - Richael Hinman's slideshare explains how mobile is transforming the world and how we should embrace mobile as its own unique medium instead of simply translating traditional computing methods. http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/mobile/bdconf-richael-hinman-presents-the-mobile-frontier/

The Future Of IT Is Mobile And Cloud - Forbes article by Maribel Lopez - the president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, John Stratton discussed how technology shifts would transform the IT landscape with a group of Industry Analysts. Verizon believes we’ve entered the next major era of computing that is based on cloud and mobility. Stratton said we experience a 10X growth in number of users with each wave computing. He told us that this wave will create a discontinuity in a company’s business processes and commercial models. http://www.forbes.com/sites/maribellopez/2012/04/18/verizons-stratton-the-future-of-it-is-mobile-and-cloud/

Opening up the Open Source Landscape - article by MICHAEL ASHERMAN - nice article on the ... complex maze of licenses and business models which relate to open source activity. Copyright law entitles programmers, like authors and artists, to exclusive control over the distribution and sale of their intellectual property, which includes source code. The value of source code is well recognized, but for competitive reasons software developers often are reluctant to include source at a reasonable price, if at all. Holding a diametrically opposite point of view, the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community contends that source code generally should be freely available, modifiable, and redistributable - read article

A Biographical Index of Nineteenth Century Pacific Photographers - finally did my first kindle publication you can see at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QGJE2G

BryteWerks' Model One projector - DEMO turns out to have a range of Intel silicon at its disposal: everything from a humble 1.6GHz Atom up to a 3.6GHZ Core i7. There are also multiple storage options, as the Model One comes with an Intel 320 SSD (60 or 120GB) -- where the OS resides to ensure super fast boot times -- and up to a 2TB HDD - see http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/19/eyes-on-brytewerks-model-one-high-def-projector-and-htpc-combo/

Celebrity Upside Down photographs - aye .. aye .. aye .. the things we do http://www.freakingnews.com/Celebrities-Upside-Down-Pictures--2433.asp

5th Ave Frogger from Tyler DeAngelo on Vimeo.

5th Ave Frogger - Celebrating 30 year anniversary of Frogger, '5th Ave Frogger' is similar to the original, except the traffic you dodge in 5th Ave Frogger is actually traveling down 5th Ave in New York City as you play. http://vimeo.com/m/40653482 via @slashdot

Museums and the National Broadband Network Roll-Out in Australia

This post is based around a paper on the National Broadband Network (NBN) by Paul Brooks called Possibilities and pitfalls of universal competitive broadband .

According to Brooks’ the Federal Government’s NBN project , launched in April 2009, is expected to deliver optic cable to 93% of Australia and wireless and satellite to the remaining 7% by 2017. This network, expected to cost 43 billion dollars, is a wholesale only endeavour and as such is providing the infrastructure between the provider and the user but not the services.

Some of the benefits of the NBN are clear, current ADSL service slows down after 1km while fibre maintains full speed for up to 40 km and this means less transmitters and infrastructure cost. The up-stream speeds for ADSL are 1-2 megabits per second Mbps) while fibre optic cable can handle 100 to 1000 Mbps and can be upgraded to take even more data.

Fibre optic is also 1:1 symmetric which enables up-load and down-load speeds to be equal, this allows users to trust their services are capable of handling commercial business transactions, like hosting video conference without falling over.

The other point Brooks was clear to point out was that the NBN was limited to the infrastructure which supported end users and commercial service providers. The intent of the NBN is to sell access to the service, probably in the first instance to large wholesale companies who will then on-sell the services to thousands of new providers opening up a new realm of opportunities for business, and government agencies.

Aside from laying the cable the NBN will also install a box in every home, and these currently have four Ethernet and two PSTN ports. This will allow users to choose more than one provider, the example Brooks used was a person with an account with one provider could simultaneously test the services from another to compare services. While people will be able to hook up multiple devices such as a TV feed, a computer, and telephone Brooks also pointed out that people are currently using one device, the router, to service a number of devices around the home. The only problem with this current arrangement is that routers will need to be updated to take advantage of the four ports as currently they only have one connection out to the rest the world.

Another problem is how effective all this broadband will be when content delivered through its pipes then has to make its way into our lives through our WiFi routers much more limited bandwidth.

Even if these problems are solved I think there are an increasing number of issues relating to how useful broadband will be for the Museum sector, particularly when other other NPO's who already share many of their backend services like libraries, the education sector, and health can see real benefits from the data streamed through the NBN.

Personally I’m looking forward to the rollout of the NBN and the multitude of new options it will bring, especially for government funded bodies. Hospital & Community services; ABC and SBS feeds of interactive content; digital radio; video coferencing and educational content accessed by every house in Australia.

But Museum managers and peak bodies have not made it clear to me yet as to how NBN direct cable links to the services are going to differentiate themselves from mobile or from our existing network connections. Increasingly many of the online services offered by Museums are being directed to mobile solutions: exhibition, events, walking tours, data access, blogs, and these are not going to be serviced by the NBN. Given its going to be up to Museums to populate this space we still seem to be lagging behind the library community in thinking about what NBN services we need which can make use of the NBN. Currently this doesn't appear to be very clear?

Does anyone have any examples of museums making full use of broadband?