Australia’s Digital Future Museum Apps and Uncanny Valley

Voyager has departed solar system with a map to where we are & an anatomical chart of our meaty bodies.Wait! Maybe not such a good idea? Howard Rheingold - @hrheingold

A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital Future to 2050 report.
A world-first, the report reveals information and communications technology (ICT) enhanced with ubiquitous high-speed broadband is becoming Australia’s new utility – as historic and game changing as electricity or telephony.

Written by Phil Ruthven, Founder and Chairman, IBISWorld, and commissioned by IBM, the report looks ahead of existing research to examine how Australia can harness this new utility to transform our lives, our cities and the way we interact.

The report rates all Australia’s industry classes (509) against the impact of the new utility. Ruthven and his extended Industry Impact Panel assessed the prospects of the 509 classes of industry in the Australian economy over the next 40-50 years.

The report predicts that 10 per cent of Australia’s 509 industries, accounting for 23 per cent of the nation’s revenue, will not function without this new utility. A further 23 per cent of industry revenue will use it to drive step-changes in their business. 15 industry classes are likely to demise if they do not reinvent themselves to embrace the digital future; and some may simply be unable to do so.

The report finds that Australia will no longer be known for its dependency on the export of natural resources over the next half century. It will become known as much an exporter of services such as tourism, business services, health and education services. The export of tourism alone could match the 2012 mineral exports totalling around $175 billion by 2030.


John Hodgman, comedian and resident expert, "explains" the design of three iconic modern objects.

Museum app - Exploring old Sydney: The Rocks (Free)
This week Nico, Einar and I finished another museum walking tour app for android and IPhone. Exploring old Sydney: The Rocks is a self-guided walking tour of The Rocks features a selection of historic images and maps from the Powerhouse Museum collection.

A really nice idea - PeerJ - lifetime Peer review Publishing Model
PeerJ provides academics with two Open Access publication venues: PeerJ (a peer-reviewed academic journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (a 'pre-print server'). Both are focused on the Biological and Medical Sciences, and together they provide an integrated solution for your publishing needs. Submissions open late Summer.

An Uncanny Mind: Masahiro Mori on the Uncanny Valley and Beyond. A post in which Norri Kageki interviews Masahiro Mori, who, as a professor of engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology in the 1970s, proposed the now-famous concept of the uncanny valley. [Read the first authorized translation of his seminal article here.] Mori's insight was that people would react with revulsion to humanlike robots, whose appearance resembled, but did not quite replicate, that of a real human. He called this phenomenon bukimi no tani (the term "uncanny valley" first appeared in the 1978 book Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction, written by Jasia Reichardt.

Do we need specialist curators?
Commented on Giles Miller's post on Do we need specialist curators where he makes a case for the continued employment of specialised curators to manage museum collections.As a curator I agree with his sentiments but I do think that there is no one size fits all solution - different museum collections are curated in different ways and perhaps a range of curatorial styles is a better approach for some of these. I also think resourcing is an issue for large diverse collections like the ones here at the Powerhouse and as a result specialised curators in one area can also lead to no curators in other areas. While I would love to think just employing more specialised curators to cover all collection areas would solve some of the problems museums face I think the solution may be a little more complicated.

David S. Linthicum CTO and founder of Blue Mountain Labs slideshare on Redefining cloud computing again - what cloud computing is, and what it should be. The way it’s defined today, and how should be defined tomorrow.


Immediately thought there could be all kinds of uses for this great idea - Evian introduces smart fridge magnet, schedules deliveries of water.


My post on Photographing the 1874 Transit of Venus looks at the 1874 transit and how it led to some major advances in the use of photography for astronomical observations.

Weekly Update on Museums, Tech, Social-Media Bell Labs etc - open source zombie gnomes

"We've evolved from being a pack of monkeys to being a pack of monkeys with a dream" Terence McKenna

Nikola Tesla comments in 1926 on wireless "the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain connected by instruments carried in vest pockets."



'Lawn of the Dead' - Zombie garden gnomes chow down on a pink flamingo - being sold on Etsy - great idea wonder why no one has done this this earlier




An interview with Jon Gertner on Bell Laboratories which from the 1920s to the 1980s was the most innovative and productive institution of the twentieth century. These ingenious, often eccentric men would were responsible for some of the major innovations of the twentieth century and Jon talks about how they aided in the development of radar, lasers, transistors, satellites, mobile phones, and much more.

Australian Heritage Strategy is nearing its closing time for public consultation - given this is the first review in 20 years you have until next Friday to put in a submission.

A Free Mandelbrot Fractal Generator Application for iphone and PC's

The opportunity to make a submission to the UK consultation on open standards has closed. But Glyn Moody's introduction entitled Open Season on Open Standards is still well worth a read - "In the face of the continuing move to such open standards, there has been a rearguard action by traditional proprietary software companies to push FRAND - Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory - as an acceptable default for "open" standards. Except that it is not, as I have discussed at length before ...."



My favourite album this week has been Electric Moon's Inferno. Melkezedek's review pretty much sums it up ".... Chock full of the prime spaced out explorations you expect from the trio, Lunatics Revenge is a perfect bridge to Inferno, where things get even meatier and a shade darker, and deeper..."

A new macrowikinomics video animation featuring some of the world's brightest innovators.

What To Do When Attacked by Pirates - The music industry fought the future and created a black market; book publishers tried another tack - an article on ebook publishing and responses to Piracy by Rob Reid.

A nice guide on how to chemically develop your own photographic film

Another nice pdf guide to Digital Archiving in the 21st century put out by Zotero

Post by Science Insider - Horizon 2020: A €80 Billion Battlefield for Open Access
by Jop de Vrieze on how the next installment of Europe's gargantuan research funding programs called Horizon 2020 will be on Open Access. Hopes ... the program will have "dedicated support to dissemination (including through open access to research results), communication and dialogue actions" and that "open access shall apply under the terms and conditions laid down in the grant agreement." read more

A nice post on the new features of Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6)

Jean Burgess posted her slides for her presentation on the role of social media in crises and risk management during the Queensland floods at the 6th Annual Enterprise Risk Management for Government conference in Sydney.

Museum Exhibitions - a new approach to audience interaction

Over the last six months or so the Powerhouse Museum has been going through a major revitalisation project. One result of all this activity has been the opening up of some large exhibition spaces. Given International Museums Day is just around the corner and the current level of interest within the museum surrounding exhibition development I thought it could be an opportune time to blog about this vital area of museum work and see how museums in general have been approaching the issue.


One of the most noticeable changes is the number of new, and affordable, technologies now available for the exhibition tool-box. While essentially a good thing trying to grapple with their integration into existing museum exhibition development processes is not always easy. But over the last year the Powerhouse has conducted a few of its own experiments such as the Minecraft Trial Program which ran at Thinkspace over the 2011-2012 Christmas Holidays.

Developed to inspire the younger audiences and to provide experiences that will make them want to return to the Museum this program was a great initiative. The museum felt the basic principles of the link into a lot of the themes and processes explored in our exhibitions. This included architecture, design, construction, materials, engineering, community engagement and sharing.

Another was the Lovelace Exhibition which integrated wonderful physical design and lighting with the Museum’s first extensive foray into handheld content delivery in conjunction with the exhibition development.

But across the Museum sector exhibitions development has tended firstly to focus on, what are our exhibitions going to be about and how do we get them on the floor? While both are valid and necessary questions when it comes to upgrading the museum’s exhibition space, changing audiences, competition from other leisure activities, and new technologies have expanded how museums can approach interactions with their audience.

This is not to say museums are rejecting exhibitions, but rather, these tools are changing some well established notions about how museum objects are interpreted and interacted with. Personally I think this is a think a really positive development and one which has the potential to bring more museum collections into spaces which can accessed by the broader public. I’m sure the display of objects on the museum’s floor will continue to be the primary focus of audience interaction. But I’m equally sure these displays will increasingly incorporate digital tools and new methodologies before, during, and after the objects are displayed on the floor.

What follows are some samples of museums and galleries who have started to have a bit of a rethink about the models they use to take objects out of museum store-rooms and place them in locations where visitors to the museum can then get access to them.

First up is an exhibition titled Public Property by the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore. Created over December 2011 and January 2012 the museum used its ‘works of art’ site to ask the public to arrange and tag collections of artworks. The Walters’ exhibition team determined the popular themes (adornment, military, creatures and death) from these tags. They then held an online vote to decide on the exhibition theme ‘Creatures’. The museums then selected creature themed artworks for the public to vote on and 106 were selected to be part of the exhibition. The exhibition will be on from June 17–Aug. 19, 2012.

“Once the exhibition is open, there will be a variety of interactive elements to complement the chosen artworks,” said Walters Manager of Web and Social Media and exhibition team leader, Dylan Kinnett. “The exhibition vision, process and design are critical to changing perceptions and attitudes regarding museums by inviting civic participation in an intentional manner,” stated Manager of Family Programs and exhibition team leader, Emily Blumenthal. “We will also have a series of programs and events associated with the exhibition to invite visitors to become further involved with their community, their museum and their exhibition.”

Between Science Art and Design – Jer Thorp is an artist and educator from Vancouver whose digital art practice explores the many-folded boundaries between science and art. Jorp’s focus is on the humanising data to encourage people to think about how the data they generate everyday carries weight in reality. Currently data is still seen as boring and opaque for those outside the domain of geeks and economists. But Jorp’s believes this should be broadened out to link Science, Design, and Art to create affirmative and lasting narratives. This has a resonance with the sessions on exhibitions development which were held here at the Powerhouse Museums which also focussed on our collections (another big data set) and the way we need to develop stories about the collections which include a combination of science art and design rather than only one of these elements.

One example of how this use of data is incorporated into displays can be seen in the design of the September 11 memorial at ground zero in New York. Here the names of the victims are not arranged alphabetically but by relationships such as partners or co-workers. The names are arranged according to a process and algorithm which was used to created “meaningful adjacencies,” based on “relationship” details which include proximity at the time of the attacks, company or organization affiliations for those who worked at the World Trade Center or Pentagon, and approximately 1,200 requests from family members. Software developed by Local Projects was used to implement this arrangement.



Wiki Loves Art Nouveau is Europeana’s first user-generated exhibition to explore some of the finest examples of Art Nouveau architecture from across Europe. For those haven’t already heard of it Europeana represents a cross sector and country solution to accessing cultural heritage in a digital form. Currently it provides s a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. The content is sourced from broad array European cultural and scientific institutions who have signed into Europeana as partners and this big picture approach is seen by some as the next step in opening up the discovery of the world’s knowledge and cultural heritage.

The International Council of Communication Design’s SEGD conference was held in March of this year in partnership with the V&A Museum. Keynotes for this symposium were David Adjaye (architect) and Kenneth Grange (industrial designer). The main theme for this year was how innovation and collaboration are radically changing design across many disciplines.

London was a bit of a stretch for my budget and so while I didn’t get to go to I do agree with their sentiment which suggests collaboration is a powerful influence in design today. Cybelle Jones, principal with exhibition design firm Gallagher & Associates and co-chair of SEGD’s International Symposium believes that while design teams are working across continents, cultures, languages, and disciplines they are also finding collaboration can lead to: unwieldy project teams, communication challenges, and dilution of design intent. While her thoughts are more focussed on product design the partnership with the V&A is clearly no accident as these changes to design processes also affect museum exhibition design.

Jones asks a question which could also resonate within the museum sector. Is design better and stronger created with one singular vision, or should it be democratic—bringing together diverse talents, expertise, and perspectives in a combined vision?

The winner of the 2012 TED prize “The City 2.0” reveals another interesting approach which could be applied to exhibition development. The suggestion here is that perhaps content could be developed and integrated across a city rather than just within the museum walls. This year the TED prize was not awarded to an individual, but to an idea, ‘City 2.0”. This is an envisaged city of the future … a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom promoting innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity. Reducing the carbon footprint of its occupants and creating a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.

Museums like the Powerhouse are an integrated part of the city’s infrastructure and as stewards of cultural heritage and promoters of learning are perfectly placed to collaborate to be a part of projects like this. City 2.0 gives grants to people around the world who are advocating on its behalf with the opportunity to collectively craft a wish which will make use of the $100,000 prize: a wish capable of igniting a massive collaborative project. Individuals or organizations who wish to contribute their ideas can submit a TED Prize wish on behalf of The City 2.0 or write to tedprize@ted.com

Many museum professionals believe the exhibition is the primary mechanism though which they broker their relationship with the broader public and visitors to the museum have traditionally been the focus group of the exhibition process. The question now is how much this relationship has changed and if so how are the digital and on-line experience constituting current visitor interaction with museum collections.

Finally there is another trend that will no doubt propel more and more collaboration across museums and communities. This is the loading of museum content being into third party sites which are not owned, or even managed by the museum. Examples of this include HistoryPin, Flickr, and Pintrest alongside making collection API’s available for third party development and integration into other platforms.

Geoff Barker, 2012

Sir Howard Grubb Parsons & Co. Scientific Instrument Makers

Thomas Grubb entered the scientific instrument business in the 1830s and quickly gained a name in the construction of telescopes. Largely self taught he ran his firm from Charlemont Bridge in Dublin where he developed both his mechanical and optical skills. As the market for telescopes was fairly limited it is likely Grubb made most of his money form his appointment as Engineer to the Bank of Ireland. He also appears to have made money from his patented cheap lenses.

By the 1850s the company had established a reputation for constructing quality telescopes and as early as the 1840s was constructing mirrors for refractors up to 15 inches in diameter. One of the firm's biggest challenges was the commission to construct a huge 48-inch reflector for Melbourne Observatory. This was to be the largest reflecting telescope in the world at the time and led Grubb to set up a separate workshop at Rathmines, Ireland. The workshop was developed by his son Howard Grubb after the retirement of his father in 1870. The build was not without its calamities however and at one stage the entire roof of the workshop went up in flames.

In 1887 astronomers from around the world embarked a massive new enterprise; known as the Carte du Ciel (Mapping the Stars) project, it involved photographing and measuring the stars in both hemispheres. In an attempt to standardise the photographs produced by different observatories telescopes with similar dimensions needed to be constructed to take the 20,000 plates the project was expected to produce. 

British institutions preferred to patronize a British maker and in 1888 Howard Grubb took on the work of constructing seven of the astrographs needed. These had photographic tubes with 13 inch object-glasses and were built especially for observatories at Cape Town, Greenwich, Oxford, Melbourne, Sydney and Tacubaya, in Mexico. 

In 1888 Melbourne and Perth requested complete Grubb telescopes while Sydney only requested the lens. The making of a lens was no simple matter and with other observatory's also requesting lenses Sydney Observatory did not receive theirs until 1890, some time after the casing and fittings for the 'Star Camera' had been completed. Melbourne's telescope also arrived in 1890. The Perth telescope arrived in 1897.

Contracts for large telescopes began to dry up in the later part of the nineteenth century and during the First World War the business began to focus to military optics. In 1918 Howard Grubb shifted the businesses to St Albans. Shortly after this the business, which was in financial difficulties, was acquired by Sir Charles Parsons and in 1925 was renamed Sir Howard Grubb Parsons and Co Ltd (known as Grubb Parsons). The new works were established alongside Parsons turbine works at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

By 1955 the company was still a relatively small concern employing about 150 peopl and was a wholly owned subsidiary of C. A. Parsons and Co. Ltd, who specialised in making heavy electrical equipment. This company built optical components for a number of telescopes including the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring near Coonabarabran.



References
Glass, I. S., Victorian Telescope Makers; the Lives and Letters of Thomas and Howard Grubb, Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1997
King, H. C., The History of the Telescope, Dover Publications, New York, 1955
G. M. Sisson, 'Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons, and Company', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 230, No. 1181, June 21, 1955, pp. 147-157

Weekly Update on Museums, Tech, Social-Media etc - free education makerbot future cities

Our Future is the Future of Our Cities; the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam - Making a City
This Biennale was a call to action which invited architects from around the world to develop models for new urban developments. The main challenge the design of better living conditions for billions of people. But how to make these cities when also responding to urgent social, economic and ecological issues. The video made me feel that Museums need to be a little more active in this discussion if they want to maintain their relevancy in future urban centers.

BandResources.net is a free resource for the gigging band and musician. They are building a database of venues, recording studios, rehearsal studios and labels. None from Australia yet but hopefully that will change soon.

Shapeways CEO on how 3D Printing Will Fuel Creative Commerce

Peter Weijmarshausen believes Shapeways was one of the first companies to put a consumer spin on 3D printing. The startup’s website allows designers to upload their wares for printing and sell the results in an Etsy-like store. Those without design experience can tweak existing models to their liking before printing them in one of 25 different materials, including stainless steel, ceramics and sterling silver. Weijmarshausen says the company printed 750,000 products in 2011. He expects “many times more this year — millions.” The other company most often credited for the rise of the consumer 3D printing trend is



MakerBot, is a really cool new company which sells affordable kit-set 3D printers for about Au 2,200.

What engages students? 10 ideas compiled from interviews with 8th graders by HEATHER WOLPERT-GAWRON

Deconstructing Cinema - One Scene At A Time
By Patrick Samuel

This is a really nice project from Static Mass Emporium which each week takes one scene from a movie and deconstructs it to reveal what kind of an impact they’ve had historically and culturally. It started in September 2011 with A Place In The Sun starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor which looked at the stunning close-ups director George Stevens used for the party scene before moving on to Brian de Palma’s Hitchcockian intro for Snake Eyes, Chan-wook Park’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ were next. Since then they have looked at key scenes from Remember Me, JFK, The Matrix and All The President’s Men.

The latest is a discussion on American Psycho ... check it out


Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson - False Resume Scandal -
This is just unbelievable no wonder employees find it hard to trust their bosses. Yahoo CEO and ex CTO of PayPal Scott Thompson was forced to apologise after being exposed for lying about false qualifications on his CV. According to Nicholas Carlson of the Business insider he ... wrote an email to staff, expressing his regret for the issue which saw a computer science degree he did not earn appear on his resume. Transcript from 2009 interview on his science degree contains the following ... Gunn: Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s Paypal. What are the most important things you learned?

Thompson: Yeah. You know, I think and I, I mention this to young kids when I’m on campus, and my son who I was just talking about at Santa Clara, what I’m happiest about in my background is if you work in technology you’re trained to solve problems.And that’s really it, you’re trained to pull apart very complex things and think about okay, how can I do this or how can I do that or how can I make it better?And that’s really the background that I have and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part thing of being an engineer is you think that way.

and while we're on the subject ...

Megaupload's Kim Dotcom: Inside the Wild Life and Dramatic Fall of the Fat Nerd Who Burned Hollywood
by Daniel Miller, Matthew Belloni

Daniel and Matthew are right this reads like it was made to be a film. "Kim Dotcom, né Kim Schmitz, the 300-pound-plus, 6-foot-7 German hacker-turned-web mogul who founded Megaupload, the cyber-locker service that offered its 180 million users remote storage of movies, music and other files. The 13th-most-visited site in the world at one point, Megaupload was a pirates' haven -- a Napster on steroids, where members could share everything from Lady Gaga hits to Transformers movies with anarchists' abandon.

Part of the service's appeal was the antihero persona of Dotcom himself. The 38-year-old had become an online celebrity, as much for his over-the-top lifestyle of $400,000 supercars, supermodel hot-tub parties and the slick YouTube video he had made with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian (in it, he raps about Megaupload: "It's a hit! It's a hit!") as for the popularity of his website. And during those two days of meetings with Batal, Dotcom, a self-professed "Dr. Evil" in a loose-fitting black jumpsuit and closely cropped hair, revealed his plan to expand Megaupload, a wildly easy-to-use service, into an empire that would rival that of his idol, Steve Jobs."

This is Big - Free online Accredited Course



MIT offered courses for free when it rolled out its MITx online learning platform last year. However, Harvard took notice of its efforts, and has joined MIT online to form the edX platform and offer courses and content for free on the web. There's no word on the available subjects just yet, but video lessons, quizzes and online labs will all be a part of the curriculum, and those who comprehend the coursework can get a certificate of mastery upon completion. edX won't just benefit those who log on, either, as it'll be used to research how students learn and how technology can be used to improve teaching in both virtual and brick and mortar classrooms. The cost for this altruistic educational venture? 60 million dollars, with each party ponying up half. The first courses will be announced this summer, and classes are slated to start this fall.

Jelly beans used by artist to recreate classic art masterpieces
California-based artist Kristen Cumings was commissioned by candy company Jelly Belly to produce several pieces of jelly bean art to add to its collection ‘Jelly Belly Masterpieces of Confectionary Art’.

Digital items archived from the Occupy movement
This is an interesting archival move - already over 15,000 digital items have been archived from the Occupy movement. They are seeking contributions through a number of different places so if you want to contribute some of your own or are interested in researching there are a number of links from this article

Australian National Cultural Policy delayed
Sydney Morning Herald article by Jacqueline Maley

"The Gillard government's long-awaited national cultural policy has been postponed because of a lack of funds, a casualty of the tight fiscal environment before the budget. The cultural policy, the first such document for nearly 20 years, is still expected to be released this year, but hopes it would be published to coincide with the budget have been dashed, given the government's pledge to return to surplus."

Australian Heritage Strategy - Open for public consultation - closing date 15 June 2012

United States shipwrecks from Battle of the Coral Sea now protected under Australian law
Australian Heritage Minister, Tony Burke, today declared the United States warships the USS Lexington, USS Sims and USS Neosho sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea as protected historic shipwrecks. On 7 May 1942 aircraft from the USS Yorktown and the Lexington sunk the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho just before noon. At about the same time, and in a separate engagement, dive bombers from the Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku sunk the destroyer USS Sims and left the US fleet oiler Neosho a crippled wreck.

Later that day a support group including the HMAS Hobart and HMAS Australia were attacked by another force of bombers, which were based at Rabaul in New Guinea. The battle continued on 8 May, when the two main carrier forces engaged directly for the first time, resulting in the loss of the Lexington with 216 members of her crew. Victory in the Coral Sea was the first major defeat for Japanese forces and the beginnings of the long and difficult road towards victory.

Plastimake
This looks interesting - it comes in balls but when you add water they become mallable and you can mold them into shapes. The plastic then hardens and becomes usable in any number of ways.

Apple's Internal Marketing Video comparing itself to WW2 1944 propaganda film Jobs as FDR, Mike Murray 'The General'

Courtney Love is having her first art show, and what do you know?

IKEA makes digital cameras out of cardboard

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?