Category: technology

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My first month at the museum

This week marks the end of my first month working as Technical Development Manager across Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives.
The role is positioned around supporting ‘everything digital’ across our 5 locations AND the web.
What makes this exciting is that we need to work with digital for people on-site and online as museums attract tourists from around the globe as well as researchers.
I have spent much of my time meeting people across the service and being nosey about what they do, how they do it and if they have ideas we can develop.
I have been grappling with tools to capture ideas, to-do lists and seeing a map of the activity with Trello starting to look a real winner.
The breadth of work is very diverse but nowt I haven’t come into contact with in previous jobs.
I have a very supportive boss and I manage a small team of 4 who have a wealth of experience to help tackle our plans. The local digital scene really has come on leaps and bounds in the last 5 years and I have been meeting an inspiring range of artists, academics and business folk.
In addition to the normal run of work I managed to speak at the ARLIS conference on self-publishing and attended the excellent UXBristol.

IF you have any thoughts on digital in the museum space do get in touch, i’d love to hear from you.

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First use of the Oculus Rift VR headset

Me about to try the headset

Yesterday I got to use the developer version of the Oculus Rift headset which provides an immersive gaming environment. Stephen Gray got the headset a few weeks ago and has already been making some headway into building his own environments.

Essentially the headset design enables you to view a virtual world without any awkward gaps between your vision, the headset and the ‘real’ world. Two views of the virtual environment (as shown below) are overlapped and off you go.

Computer showing my VR view

It is hard to describe but the VR world does actually feel very real and my tiny brain was partly tricked into believing I was dropping from the clouds onto a runway. Because you can look anywhere with a smooth transition using your head, everything starts to feel natural.

I tested about 3-4 environments including a rollercoaster…then I felt my tongue start to dry and an odd feeling in my tummy. Fast forward an hour and back at home I started to feel a little sick… I have long suffered from a problem with the refresh rate on CRT screens and I wonder if this was triggered using the headset. When you switch game you leave the VR world and can see a really bad version of the computer desktop and I wonder if it was this switching that set me off.

I can see great potential in this type of tool for use in education, museums and the design industry. The headset brings the opportunities of the digital world into our natural ‘view’ of the world. Immediately I could see training scenarios, interpretation and gaming uses for the tool. It also strikes me as a true ’emerging’ and uniquely digital tool, maybe on the level of ‘touch’ devices. I wouldn’t put it into the bracket of a widely popular device for the average person, but certainly for niche markets in the short-medium term.

Once I have had the chance to have a better play i’m sure uses will start to come to me.

Now let me just sit down and recover.

 

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Individual as Institution by Lawrie Phipps

As more academic and academic related staff adopt the ‘individual as institution’ approach, institutions must reflect on their response.  Readers familiar with Twitter may be familiar with the phrase “The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the views of my employer”.  This is an often cited phrase designed as a response to risk averse “social media policies”, which have the effect of further distancing the individual and individual thought from host institutions.

Read. 

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How to copy images to Google Nexus 7

Showing the drag and drop between 2 folders

To copy images from your computer to the nexus 7 you need to drag and drop the photos from your computer across to the photos folder on the tablet.

Notice I said DRAG, it won’t allow you to copy and paste, hopefully this gets fixed as it is annoying!

If you are using a Mac, first you need to install Android File Transfer which will automatically pop up when connected to the tablet.

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The new HLF policy

The Heritage Lottery Fund has just announced new policy and requirements for projects from July 2012.

IT Services R&D /ILRT including myself had a hand in producing the new requirements and it is great to see positive feedback on this move to allow digital only projects with the HLF. We quietly worked on the guidance and delivered a series of workshops around the UK to HLF staff. Something that I am really proud of is that all projects will be using Creative Commons Licensing which we hope will enable new uses and help prove better value for use of public money.

 

 

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The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students

JISC have released the results of a 3 year study into my generation (Y) research studying behaviour.

Our research findings reveal:

  • Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (eg journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (eg primary archival material and large datasets).
  • Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic.
  • Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for Generation Y doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research.
  • This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.
  • Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.

These findings raise important questions about research development, training and support within research led organisations and the openness and sharing of research.

I say WHY are things the way they are.

Read the study.

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Design Jam Bristol: gallery UX challenges

On Saturday 16th June myself and around 20 other strangers rocked up to Spike Island* in Bristol for a user experience (UX) Day called Design Jam Bristol.

As with the typical wonder of discover I found out about the event from a RT on twitter from a London UX pro.

Ever since I started to create ‘things’ for other people I have been interested in how those things are discovered, used, misused or neglected. The summary of the day grabbed my attention:

Design Jam is a one-day design session, during which people will team up to tackle engaging User Experience (UX) challenges. Similar to developer ‘hackdays’ the aim is to get UX professionals, designers, developers (and more) together to learn and collaborate with each other while working on actual design problems. The sessions champion open-source thinking & sharing and are non-profit, run by local volunteers.

After a tour of the building (they do a lot!) we got chunked into random groups (me, Keir, Robin and Tom) and cracked on with the task which was to explore how to encourage everyday folk to visit art space and galleries like Spike that were compelling and rewarding. The following are some of my own thoughts as well as the group around making art spaces a Celebration:

  • We ARE the user – most of us had never been to Spike island before
  • discovery ain’t easy – even when you are near the building you’d have no idea. We thought of ‘maplines’ to offer various guides around the stuff on offer
  • Art spaces can be intimidating
  • The experience starts from the very first interaction with the words/building and should be considered part of the staff/artists remit. Three states: pre, during and post-visit
  • What should anybody care about these spaces?
  • Let us talk, take photos, videos and make our our interpretations
  • How can digital be used to help the artist and visitor make connections e.g. put communication methods with the work
  • ‘speak to the curb’ attract passing traffic – from the outside what does the building communicate?
  • Consider ‘the wall’ which mixes physical communication and captures online
  • Destroy and rebuild what these spaces are for – this non typical event dragged my carcass to spike
  • View the PDF (12mb) of some of our thoughts used for our presentation

I like free stuff, used to paint a bunch, made digital pieces and like to support local events… yet rarely do I dip into the art spaces available across the uk. For me personally it is partly due to being completely unaware of what is happening. I now mostly discover things from my networks such as twitter so it is essentially art spaces not only have a presence here but realise that it is likely a link removed from the organisation itself that will get me through the door. Make it easy for us to point to you, ask you questions and reflect on our points of interaction. Come to us, help us and we’ll reward you with visits and actively spread the word.

I would like to thank the organisers, other teams and my own team for a thought provoking and entertaining day.

* This was my first visit to Spike island…..

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Getting Real from 37signals

Getting Real is now available for free as a PDF book. It has been a few years since I last read it but I remember it fondly:

Want to build a successful web app? Then it’s time to Get Real.
Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.
Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that
represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics,
wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features,
less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and
most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).
Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that
people are going to use. It begins with what the customer
actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets
you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.
Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the
cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching,
tweaking, and constantly improving which makes
it a perfect approach for web-based software.
Getting Real delivers just what customers need
and eliminates anything they don’t.

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The Verge reviews – ebook readers

The verge has a fantastic collection of product reviews for dedicated ebook readers on the market. Believe it or not the Amazon Kindle is not the only reader on market. Be sure to make use of the sites ‘filter’ feature which makes comparing products an enjoyable experience.