Technology Tour - 3/8/2007 - 3/14/2007

This week's tour offers current news items that overlap with some topics I have covered in the past: license-free access to museum images for students and scholars, RFID's ability to enhance visitor experience (and commerce) and the increased stress of multiple profiles, communication mediums and contact information that have arisen.

• On the licensing front, The Metropolitan Museum of Art this week announced that it has formed a partnership with ArtSTOR to serve license-free images to the scholarly and academic community. This was the very crux of my criticism of the Smithsonian and Corbis deal. It did not make any allowance for fair use. Bravo to the Met for its foresight and advocacy of cultural capital in the service of public good.


• In international news, the City of Amsterdam has become the first municipality on the globe to create an RFID infrastructure for tourists. Once purchased, the RFID-enabled I Amsterdam Card enables users to receive free admission to museums and unlimited access to public transportation. The expansion of this technology reminds me of my post this week on Web 2.0 and social good. For whatever reason, Web 2.0 services are most successful when they closely mirror an offline activity. For museums looking to build RFID-enabled collection portals that bridge offline and online visits, a more robust emergence of RFID with personal experience represents a strong step forward. Via RFID, first comes the management solution for access control and ticketing, next comes curatorial opportunities for accessing content. I hope to see similar programs here in the United States.


• Social network fatigue comes to phone. This article from the New York Times (subscription required) points to user communication fatigue across communication channels. Not only are people being swamped by their online social networking profiles, but the communication devices of real-world social networks (personal and work email, personal/home/work/IM/skype phone numbers) are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. The arrival of services to merge phone numbers into one should come as no surprise. Next is the question of how communication network fatigue can be solved online.


• Given their revenue problems (current and future), why isn't big media designing online radio and streaming services? Another NYT article, this time discussing the emergence of a new online radio site catering to a no-hassle model for the young and on-the-go technology users. This new service, called slacker, builds greater personalization and recommendation features beyond what is currently offered by sites like pandora. Funny, the record, media and broadcasting industries seem content to let new developers and syndicators create online services, build user bases and then complain about losing revenue. Hardly a proactive stance, no?


• Finally, I've tried to highlight an interest website now and then. I got word of the Museum of Lost Interactions from 24 Hour Museum. This mini-museum site is a competently design effort that features old and obscure technologies that have helped define the experience of content and media. Enjoy!

RFID and Museums

Last night I had the great opportunity to drop in on the Brand Experience Lab. For this group, the challenge is to create memorable experiences that seamlessly pair consumer expectations with new technologies. Seeing some of the next generation technologies in marketing and interactive media, I was reminded just how far behind the cultural sector had gotten with even current technologies. RFID being a prime example of a solution that is way past due.

RFID in Museums is by no means a new idea, it just isn't being fully explored and leveraged to maximum effect. Back in 2003, RFID was making the rounds of Museum technology conferences and research papers. While there are institutions out there that are using RFID, these tend to be rooted in collections management. After my own epiphany at BEL, I became even more aware of how far RFID could enrich and inform the in-Museum experience for visitors.

I will not pontificate too much on this. Instead, I'll let my readers review some of the resources and links out there relevant to RFID and Museums and hopefully guide some great research and services to the right audiences.

• Cleveland Museum of Art - The publication CIO describes the Cleveland Museum's ventures in active visitorship to their encyclopedic institution.


• The Walker Art Center currently leverages RFID in its collections management and location tracking systems.


• eXspot: A Wireless RFID Transceiver for Recording and Extending Museum Visits - A great research and case study on how RFID can be combined with visitor systems to improve and extend the user visitation experience.


• Another eXspot article. This one presented at the ACM conference. All articles relating to RFID and Museums on the ACM portal can be explored here.


• The National Museum in Tokyo explores RFID in coordination with a PDA-type user guide. This would open up a host of applications and devices from wayfinding to audio guides and other self-guided tour options.


• Far and away a leader in Museum and attraction-based uses of RFID, LEGOLAND implants RFID into tickets and bracelets for admissions and visitor tracking. They also use it to locate lost children.


• Another LEGOLAND case study.


• Finally, two articles on different handheld technologies that read RFID tags in Museum contexts. One at Engadget the other from a university in Germany.

Weekly Tour 1/27/2007 - 2/2/2007

There was a lively offline discussion with the DigComm users on the new (im)potency of video online. As a follow-up to that discussion - this week's theme is Images: Moving, Social and Interactive.

• On the moving image front, there were a couple of great stories this week discussing video, YouTube and social networks. Frantic Industries discussed the impact of tagging and bookmarking on the YouTube platform. Supposedly, users can post YouTube videos to networks like Digg and Del.icio.us through the click of an icon. This functionality points to the ever-increasing social tendancies of images and videos on the web.
  
  Perhaps the pressure for increased social value, reference and meaning, is making up for the otherwise short attention span of most web video. Editorializing on this trend, two great articles discussed the democratizing (or shallowing) content model of YouTube - discussed here on Wired and here on O'Reilly.
  
  
• On the interactive front, there was an interesting amount of buzz related to the Bumptop desktop prototype released this week on the web and specifically featured on YouTube. Link Though this project is just in its infancy, the redesign of the user interfaces for desktops will most likely translate sooner or later to other platforms - website, phones and PDA's. For Museums, the question will be whether better, more natural interfaces hinder or help the development of educational and interpretive content on digital devices. Does handheld technology as "life's remote control" (as envisioned in Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs) free the Museum to explore new methods of interaction or present yet another possibility and budget drain on already strapped technology departments? Hype versus reality on this front - time will tell.
  
  
• Another entry on this interactivity front, the San Jose Tech Museum has begun exploring DAVE, a next generation handheld to be used in their tours, guides, displays and exhibitions. Can't waite to see whether this type of interactive handheld is paired with RFID and other smart tags to increase accessbility and content retention for visitors in Museums.
  
  
• One final note: according to the Associated Press, the Louvre in Paris set attendance record for the 2006 calendar year. How did they do it? Engaging programming, winning exhibitions and publicly relevant interpretive and marketing strategies. It isn't all technology which is a wonderful thing - otherwise the technology would be meaningless - a vessel containing nothing.