I have a presentation that I've done a couple of times that exams low-cost technology that can be used for museum applications. At the moment I'm spending some time looking at some new apps to add to the list.
On the list are two video editing programs and two photo editing programs.
What I'm most excited about is a simple little app called Readability. It's a bookmarklet that let's you decide how you want to view a webpage in order to read it (and print it if you like). When I demoed the Firefox plugin Nuke Anything, there was much rejoicing. User could delete annoying flashing ads and happily print their content without the ads wasting toner. But you had to do it one ad at a time.
Now some of you might be thinking who worries about wasting toner. But when you are in the non-profit world, especially during a recession, you are always looking for a way to eke out every penny's worth.
Well Readability is ten times better. It gets rid of everything at once and you get to decide the final format of the content you are trying to read. You get to pick the font, margin, and style. It's still in the experimental stage but the makers have made it so it works with most major browsers. They say it isn't 100% effective all of the time so they are looking for issue reports and comments, but it has worked every time for me. I'm in Heaven because reading on the Internet has just become so much easier.
Last Friday my day started out unlike any other: I was up at 5:00 am. For those who know me well, they understand that this is nothing short of a miracle. I'm more a night person than a morning person, but that day I had somewhere special to be. I had been invited to a sneak peak of a new James Turrell skyspace at Crystal Bridges. I wasn't sure what to expect. I hadn't really understood any of the literature I read about what a skyspace is. When I asked around, no one could adequately explain to me what it was. They would try a few words and then just get lost in their thoughts. At this point the responses all became the same: “Just go, it will be like no other experience you've ever had.” I'll try to explain the experience, but like so many before me, I'm sure my words will clumsily convey the event. First let me describe the structure. From the walking trail you can see the native Winslow/Fayetteville stones that cover the outside. The circular structure s...