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

Heist Pintrest You vs. Cat Helix Nebula

National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC. by O Palsson

Some Free Stock Photos Websites for using in your projects Dreamtime Stock Photos,Free Stock Photos .com, Stock Exchng,Deposit Photos.com, Flickr creative commons

I signed up this week for the GOOD Magazine as I thought this was a really nice alternative to the depressing litany of bad news focussed on by most news reporting channels - read here

Examples of how museums are using Pinterest: a tumbler post from Jennifer Fuchs on how 30+ museums are using Pinterest to showcase their collections. Post here

‘You vs. Cat’ - cat food maker Friskies has debuted their new iPad game called ‘You vs. Cat’ that pits cat owners against their pet. read

The first volume of International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era well worth a look. download articles

We all know mobile technology has a huge uptake in the west but the take up in Africa is amazing. It is now claimed to be the 2nd largest mobile market by connections after Asia. Perhaps even more important is the way these countries are by-passing the PC and have gone straight into the hand-held digital environment - 90% of all phones in Africa are mobile phone - here no frills services like text messaging etc still play a huge role in business and getting things done. In Kenya 18 million people use mobile phone for their bank account transaction etc. read more at Presentation slideshow from TECHPRENEURWORLD -Resources for Technical Entrepreneurs in the Developing World

This is pretty cool toy gun attachment for your smartphone that lets you play shooter games in the real world. AppTag Laser Blaster

This is a nice article from Mashable Social Media on how to promote your institution on Pinterest. Most of these 10 strategies make good sense. read here

Industry Heavies Unite to Float "the Science Cloud" called Helix Nebula - more than a dozen international IT firms have partnered to create Helix Nebula - The Science Cloud, which will be used by European researchers to provide cloud-based computing support for scientific discoveries.article here

“Time” is the most used noun in the English language, yet it remains a mystery. Sean Carroll just completed a multidisciplinary conference on the nature of time and gives his stab at a top ten list partly inspired by our discussions: the things everyone should know about time. see here

Stanford researchers create exotic electrons that may lead to new materials, devices. "Our new approach is a powerful new test bed for physics," Manoharan said. "Molecular graphene is just the first in a series of possible designer structures. We expect that our research will ultimately identify new nanoscale materials with useful electronic properties." see here

A year-long undercover investigation has found evidence of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) companies cutting and pulping legally protected ramin trees, a practice that violates both Indonesian and international law. Found largely in Sumatra's peatswamp forests, the logging of ramin trees (in the genus Gonystylus) has been banned in Indonesia since 2001; the trees are also listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and thus require special permits to export. see full article

Heist is an experimental project that uses Open Exhibits and GestureWorks software and is powered by Sensus server technology to enable effortless networking. Digital museum objects can be easily shared with visitor's smart phones or tablets. All this happens without visitors having to download a mobile app. Heist uses a WiFi captive portal; as museum visitors connect to the network they are pushed an HTML 5 application. They simply add their name, pick a color and their personal avatar appears on the table.

Lytro Article by By Joshua Goldman - the good news: creates photos that you can refocus again and again--after you've shot them--opening up new creative possibilities. the bad news: proprietary Lytro image file format can only be processed and edited with Lytro's so-far Mac-only software, and if you want to share images you need to use Lytro's site. Its LCD is poor for such an otherwise high-end device. see review and pictures

John Coltrane, Frank Kofsky Interview 1966 Part 1

14-year-old constructs a LEGO printer - Leon Overwheel, who lives in New York, has constructed a printer out of LEGO blocks which he dubbed the LEGO Mindstorms NXT Printer http://designtaxi.com/news/351768/14-Year-Old-Constructs-A-LEGO-Printer/

Nice resource - How to Capture Audio & Video in HTML5: Audio/Video capture has been the "Holy Grail" of web development for a long time. For many years we've had to rely on browser plugins (Flash or Silverlight) to get the job done. HTML5 to the rescue. It might not be apparent, but the rise of HTML5 has brought a surge of access to device hardware. Geolocation (GPS), the Orientation API (accelerometer), WebGL (GPU), and the Web Audio API (audio hardware) are perfect examples. These features are ridiculously powerful, exposing high level JavaScript APIs that sit on top of the system's underlying hardware capabilities. This nice tutorial by Eric Bidelman introduces a new API, navigator.getUserMedia(), which allows web apps to access a user's camera and microphone.

Article - Extending copyright exceptions for preservation - intellect property & O/S group outline case here

29 Useful And Free Thin Fonts Download