Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Web Muster

The IMA releases TAP (its exhibition interpretation tool for mobile devices) as open source software, and explains why you should use it

The MIA has a glorious Flickr set you should check out; portraits of its staff, with short & interesting interviews. A simple, cheap, and engaging idea.

The Smithsonian is running an 'online conference' called Problem Solving with Smithsonian Experts that you can take part in for free. Twelve 50-minute sessions are being run over 4 days; I'm wondering if I can motivate myself into getting up at 6am to take part in How do we grasp the vastness of the universe?

2 comments:

Glen Barnes said...

There is definitely a place for an open source solution and will fit the needs of a lot of institutions. However a lot of smaller institutions do not have the skills, staff or budgets to install, upgrade and deploy a CMS let alone compile applications for the iPhone and other platforms. At My Tours we are trying to provide a simple set of tools that will work for both the smaller museums and larger organisations all without locking the users into to longer term contracts or proprietary formats.

Courtney Johnston said...

Hey Glen

I'd say the TAP tool could be beyond the reach of even larger institutions. NZ galleries & museums rarely seem to have the full complement of web staff (programmers, designers, integrators, UX and content) which means a lot of work gets shopped out to vendors - which can be great, I've done some wonderful projects with external vendors - but which can also mean that you're stuck with something you can't maintain, and no extra staff knowledge at the end of the process.

Thanks for bringing My Tours up; I should have noted it here too. It's good for people out there to see the range of options available to them before they start commissioning work.

Courtney