Web apps and mobile apps are very different (or at least they their use should be) unfortunately some museums are creating mobile apps that would be far more useful as web apps or simply as mobile ready web sites. Unlike a mobile app a web app cannot access a smart phone's camera, microphone, accelerometer, GPS etc... You are also dealing with an issue of complied code verses a markup language and interpreted code which is slower. Worse still are mobile apps that are designed by museums that do not take advantage of web connectivity and are bloated space hogging mobile applications that contain all the information within the app itself instead accessing it from a web database, at 54MB the American Museum of Natural History's Dinosaur iPhone app is a good example. There may be reasons for creating an all-in-one mobile app such as the museum itself cannot get mobile reception, however, that issue probably should be addressed before the mobile app is built in the first place.
Also, while I agree that museum's web site should be mobile ready, I take issue with one of the comments. "Buy a .Mobi domain name for your museum and it will automatically convert your website to mobile ready." No domain name extension can convert a web site to mobile. If you web site is poorly coded for mobile, it stays poorly coded for mobile. However, through the use of mobile specific style sheets and mobile specific Javascript you can restyle your web site layout for mobile and not have to buy the rather worthless .mobi domain. You can just as easily create a subdomain for your mobile content Ex: Walker Art Center web site: http://www.walkerart.org<http://www.walkerart.org> and Walker Art Center mobile site: http://m.walkerart.org You already own/lease your domain name, no need to get a second one. In addition to that, many smart mobile devices have already built browsers to handle traditional web sites, but even if you want to go the extra step and design your site for maximum mobile friendliness you probably don't (and shouldn't) have to replicate all the content that is on your traditional web site. Hopefully you have some type of analytics. Google Analytics allows you to track mobile device use. You should see what pages get accessed via mobile (and where) and build your mobile web site with the content mobile users want accordingly. Joe Hoover Digital Technology Outreach Specialist Minnesota Historical Society W. 345 Kellogg Blvd. St. Paul, MN 55102 Phone: (651) 259-3461 Email: joe.hoover at mnhs.org<mailto:joe.hoover at mnhs.org> Local History: www.mnhs.org/lhs<http://www.mnhs.org/lhs>
