Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

I’m adding this post rather tentatively in response to a video that I’ve just seen at a seminar on the future of e-government by Mike Pearson from the State Services Commission. The video was created in 2004 by the Museum of Media History. It charts the history and future of media through to 2014. You can view it here (it’s eight minutes long and thought provoking).

In the year 2014, the video predicts that internet users will be provided with news stories customised to their individual needs and interests. Thanks to the information we’ve provided to search engines and social networking sites, data about our personal social networks, demographics, interests and consumer habits are used by the likes of Google and Microsoft to filter the information and messages that we receive.

The widespread availability of tools for preparing and publishing content online has made it easier than ever before to create and consume media. As users everywhere create their own news and access the news of their trusted networks, The Fourth Estate goes into freefall - no longer having sole authority over the news or the ability to regulate news channels.

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I’ve been reading about peer-to-peer marketing strategies. Although I’ve struggled to find a definition, I think that peer-to-peer marketing is about capitalising on your audience’s willingness (or rather, a segment of your audience) to market your product on your behalf. 

Methods for influencing people’s decisions have changed radically. If we can provide the tools (largely web-based) that help our audiences organise and socialise, they will influence the decisions of others, ultimately helping to build audiences at events. 

Strategies might include posting reviews or testimonials or pictures on your website from people attending your events, allowing visitors to email events information from your website to friends, through to creating quirky ‘viral advertising’ that gets posted on YouTube or other content-sharing sites or passed from one person to another via email. 

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I’ve just been reading about NaumaiPlace.com, a new website which links marae with their whanau worldwide. Launched in May, the website aims to connect marae with the 85 percent of Maori who live away from their local rohe, due to employment, education and other whanau interests.

Ten Te Arawa marae are involved in the pilot. On the website, each marae can provide their own history, video footage, noticeboards, photo galleries, taonga detail, rangitahi section and online store. (Nice to see they are using existing tools such as YouTube and Slide to host rich media, which also gets word out about the project through these networks.) NaumaiPlace.com may be extended to other marae in future.

With between 70 and 80 percent of Maori able to access the internet through work, tertiary institutions, cyber cafes or at home, I hope this is an idea whose time has come. Online communities take time to build, but the potential benefits will be the strengthening of both iwi Maori and local marae.

Here’s a video of the launch, featuring those involved and some shots of the site itself (on the website, the marae pages are only viewable if you register). If you have difficulties viewing this video in your browser, go to YouTube to view it.

Papers from the WebWise 2007: Eighth Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World are available in the July issue of the peer-reviewed internet journal First Monday. The conference’s theme was ‘Stewardship in the digital age’. The papers explore how to enhance preservation and access to cultural heritage in digital form, including preserving:

• physical objects and intangible forms (language, ritual, etc) of cultural heritage
• digital surrogates used to encapsulate this heritage for access and preservation purposes
• art, music, literature, film, and other creative expressions that are ‘born digital’.

The papers report on projects and case studies in digital preservation, new tools and practices to help with preservation efforts and the challenges ahead. In her wrap-up of the conference’s themes, Diane Zorich writes:

The most overarching theme [of the conference] can be characterized by the aphorism ‘everything old is new again.’ The concepts of curation, preservation, and access discussed throughout the conference are actually age old traditions rooted in our institutions’ missions and core values. Putting the word ‘digital’ in front of these concepts means new challenges, not new changes, to our missions and values.

If this is the space you work in, this issue of First Monday will be a good read.

Nicely done - the Christchurch Art Gallery has put its audio tours on the gallery’s website. You can listen to the guides on an iPod at the gallery for $5 or download and listen to them at home for free.

The narration is by actor Sam Neill and the audio tours feature some of the Gallery’s - and New Zealand’s - most significant works of art. The website includes an image of the painting under discussion, as well as a transcript if you can’t get the technology working. 

Worth having a listen even if you can’t get to the gallery. I heard somewhere the other day that the number of visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s virtual experience is greater by a third than the number of physical visitors. Virtual visits can be be relevant and measurable cultural experiences, as much as physical ones (and hopefully they sometimes initiate physical visits, too).