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.
This week I'm attending an 8 day museum management institute on Jekyll Island. Today was just the first day and although it was mainly welcome speeches and getting to know each other there was one session that was presented and I think it was a very interesting one. The session was on management and leadership. I think the thing the presenter hit on the most for me was the difference in what it means to be a manager and what it means to be a leader. It was very interesting to quickly learn the differences in the two types of work that both positions fill. He'll be continuing the discussion in a second session tomorrow, so I'll speak more on it later. Jekyll Island is beautiful and we were able to tour the historic district today. I highly encourage anyone to come out here if you ever get the chance. Georgia has laws that the island must remain 65% un-developed making it such a beautiful natural setting. Also every dollar spent on the island stays on the island and ...