David, At Open Museum, we considered building an iphone app but decided instead to create a web-based service, Mobeum. Our primary reason was to avoid locking into one kind of smartphones. The service, which is in public alpha, reliably supports iPhone, Android and Blackberry (so far). It is being tested at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth in their European Collection.
If you're interested in seeing our first pilot test results, I just made blog posts about the raw data: <http://blog.openmuseum.org/2010/01/raw-mobeum-pilot-test-data.html> and the narrative: <http://blog.openmuseum.org/2010/01/mobeum-pilot-test-at-hood-museum-of-art.html>. You can see the Hood Open Museum collection here: <http://www.openmuseum.org/museum/show/42>. If on a smartdevice, select mobile view. Note that each object automatically generates a number code and QR code, which is easily printed out by the curator. Visitors can connect to the Hood (or any museum's) tour in gallery through SMS, URL or QR code. If you check it out (which we hope you will), please keep in mind that Mobeum is very much a work in progress: with coding still underway; content, including audio, being built; and further design tweaks to be made. That being said, all feedback is welcome. The freer, the franker, the better. Maureen Maureen Doyle Heritance, Executive Director Open Museum Norwich, Vermont 05055 USA +1(802)649-1945 maureen at openmuseum.org www.openmuseum.org Open Museum, connecting people, objects, and museums.
