Jeremy,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I completely agree with you when you say: "The wifi question... I do agree
that if it enables what might be a fair sized slice of real-world visitors
to gain quick, free and reliable mobile access to your web-based resources,
it could be a liberating thing for both parties."
I hope you are right when you predict: "The perennial debate over whether to
tailor something to work beautifully on one platform or to get it to work
adequately on lots will need to be had on a case by case basis, but for
reasons of cost (hardware and software) and access I imagine that we'll see
ever more decisions made in favour of building cross-platform web enabled
apps that suit access by wireless mobile devices"
At Open Museum we are up to our ears in creating a cross-platform service,
for the simple reason that there is no way to predict how (on which mobile
device) a visitor will receive a link to the site. Open Museum supports
both desktop and mobile browsers and provides a distinct but integrated
visitor mobile tour ("Mobeum"). The tour is a playlist, easily constructed
from the same back end server/content as the browser collections. Still in
public alpha release, there is much left to do both in terms of design,
code, content, but it is up, running and serving a dozen or so museums.
Now you can see why I care so deeply about the question of free wifi access
in museums (besides feeling it's better for the world). If a museum has
wifi, it has the potential to create a museum tour that ties together the in
gallery and online experiences in a way that makes sense and enhances the
visitor experience.
The Open Museum site does not yet present have an "About Mobeum" (nor a
decent "About Open Museum" for that matter), but we're working on it. We
have written a paper for Museums in the Web on our first Mobeum pilot with
the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth and will be presenting in Denver.
So as you now see (I hope!), Open Museum isn't on another topic at all. But
right in the thick of the cross-platform question.
Maureen
--
Maureen Doyle
Heritance, Executive Director
Open Museum
P.O. Box 1564
Norwich, Vermont 05055 USA
+1(802)649-1945
maureen at openmuseum.org
www.openmuseum.org
Connect with people, objects and museums at www.openmuseum.org
* * *
In reply to...
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:42:35 -0000
From: "Ottevanger, Jeremy" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [MCN-L] On museum visitor login
To: "Museum Computer Network Listserv" <mcn-l at mcn.edu>
Message-ID:
<
CBE3ED7D5509D54F9C4E1D614931DF0E063B890D at mail-mwh-2k3.museumoflondon.org.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi Maureen,
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Blog posts have been very thin on
the ground for a few months and may remain so for a while but this was
an idea I really wanted to write up and I'll try to follow it up before
too long with a digest of survey responses and blog comments.
The wifi question I can't respond to with any real depth of knowledge,
but I do agree that if it enables what might be a fair sized slice of
real-world visitors to gain quick, free and reliable mobile access to
your web-based resources, it could be a liberating thing for both
parties. The perennial debate over whether to tailor something to work
beautifully on one platform or to get it to work adequately on lots will
need to be had on a case by case basis, but for reasons of cost
(hardware and software) and access I imagine that we'll see ever more
decisions made in favour of building cross-platform web enabled apps
that suit access by wireless mobile devices, as you suggest, as well as
by at-their-desk computer users, instead of beautiful but constrained
device- and context-specific gallery tours etc. These will always have
their place too, though (see Koven Smith's review of the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum iPod tour for a great discussion of this
http://kovenjsmith.com/archives/311).
And then if we are taking people onto the web whilst their strolling our
galleries, there are still more use-cases for universal
registration/login, and for a means to pool what you've done in one
museum with what you did in another (which might be the motivation to do
what you wouldn't bother doing if it was limited to one institution). So
I rather like the wifi-to-fewer-silos rationale!
On another topic, I don't know why I've not looked into Open Museum
before but it's a really interesting project. Very cool.
Still welcoming further responses to the survey (http://bit.ly/aGDcn7).
All the best,
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: jottevanger at museumoflondon.org.uk
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
