Open Museum Goes Mobile

There are various kinds of Smartphone (cell phones and other mobile devices with browser) available today. To give an idea how fast their use is growing, the iphone has become the camera most often used to upload photos on Flickr.

Open Museum, like other forward looking web services, is going mobile. It's a question of survival. My bet is that within (well within!) 3 years, most of the world's population 13 and older will be carrying some kind of mobile device that connects to the internet. I also bet that high speed internet will become available everywhere people live -- even the hills of Vermont where until today we've been hobbling along via satellite.

Going mobile also makes good business sense for museums. After all their core mission is making their collections available to the public and disseminating information about these collections. Hard hit by the economic crisis and competition from a plethora of recreation and information alternatives, museums know that they have to remake themselves with a more pertinent, participatory and friendly public face. The mobile web offers exciting possibilities for this kind of make over.

Given these developments, the time has come for museums to leverage their visitors' mobile devices. The cell phone can help disseminate more information to more people in a more user friendly and participatory way. It can also enhance the visitor's gallery experience by providing audio guides and visitor choice about additional information. Finally, with Open Museum's support, it can do so at no cost to the museum for hardware, software or technical support. Cell phone connection provides an opportunity for museums to capture new audiences and generate deeper connections with existing audiences.

To help museums go mobile, Open Museum is developing Mobeum, a mobile service that enables browsing any time, any place from mobile device and enhances museum visits through various features, most notably audio guides. Mobeum is in alpha testing, preparing for public release in February.

In a nutshell, here's how Mobeum works. Every object in Open Museum is automatically assigned a code (number and bar code) that can be accessed by smart phones. For starters, we're focusing on Apple's Iphone and Google's Android, but other devices, such as the ITouch, Blackberry, and alternative phones with browser, can also connect. Once a curator has created an object in Open Museum, s/he can print out labels that include visitor cell phone access codes and a set of instructions for use.

In the gallery, the visitor is presented with three options for connecting to Mobeum via their cell phone: a free text message, a URL or a, a bar code read by a scanner applications (such as Optiscan, my personal favorite). QR code readers, which are already standard on Japanese phone, will without a doubt soon be built into every smart phone. Whichever route the visitor chooses, they will end up looking at and image of the first object and a bunch of choices for further activity, including audio guide, more information, bigger image, friend this museum and favorite (bookmark) this object. These options will eventually include other participatory options and tap into social networks, such as twitter and Facebook, as can be done in Open Museum desktop view.

We invite you to visit Open Museum on your mobile device and tell us what you think. By the way, we're also testing the name Mobeum and would welcome your feedback.