Nick, all
On the surface it's the big mobile question: Develop a full, satisfying and functional experience for a limited number of people or a slower, less satisfying, more clunky experience for a bigger audience...
As museum types we've always had to think about the widest possible audience, so we tend to the latter. We're all a bit twitchy about providing an experience which can only be viewed by the top slice of the top slice, albeit an experience that is - at least at present - a much better experience.
One of the things that I think we're going to have to get used to with mobile is that there will very likely never be a definable convergence. A single platform isn't going to emerge, possibly with the exception of the one which is (currently) quite weak for mobile: html.
The standard answer to your question, boringly, is probably "it depends": It depends on which bits of the mobile hardware you want to access, it depends on how fast you need it to be, it depends on the audience you're trying to hit. More importantly, and I'd urge anyone in a museum to consider this before doing anything else at all: **ask yourself first WHY you are building a mobile experience** and then go from there (my post: http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2009/12/18/great-about-mobile/)
Putting that aside for a moment, my personal opinion is that the wise money goes towards building very strong web-based apps, *and where possible port those into specific platforms* by using some of the available technologies. Your options for doing this include:
> holding all the data on the web and delivering it to the app via some kind of API (see the Powerhouse Museum who have just built an iPhone app where all the content is delivered from Wordpress: http://bit.ly/cAEKyd). This obviously gives you the option of delivering both web and native from a single content store
> use one of the platforms that lets you build for the web (ie html, javascript, etc) and then compile to native platform: these currently include Titanium Appcelerator (http://www.appcelerator.com/), PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com/), Rhomobile (http://rhomobile.com/) etc. Benefit is you can build using existing skills, and realistically hope to deliver to both web AND native platforms
> focus purely on a web-based offering, but do it in a way that it works and feels as much like a native app as possible. NextStop did this, before getting hoovered up by Facebook - the site is no longer visible but there's a great interview on why they chose HTML5 over native here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jks-idxVrCs. See also sites like http://www.mobilehtml5.com/ - actually, there is a fair amount of capability now (location, local database) and although network speed gets in the way, this is only going to get better..
IMO, *all museums* (+visitor attractions etc) should have a minimal mobile version of their key visiting pages (location, what's on, contact details), no matter what else they're doing for their mobile strategy. This is very easy and very cheap to do, and will be increasingly important. See latest Ofcom report for some of the stats: http://bit.ly/d1TMkA.
tfn
Mike
Mike Ellis
Research & Innovation Group
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Poole
Sent: 19 August 2010 12:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Historical Maps IPhone App
Hi all,
Really interesting thread. This last comment prompted a question - some
time ago we were in discussion about producing an app. The advice from
our developers was that a standards-compliant website would be both more
futureproof and more widely-accessible than something limited to a
particular platform (or even OS, given the rate at which both Android
and iPhone are churning).
On the flipside, the advice from everyone with an iPhone is that it
really doesn't exist unless it sits on your interface and is
downloadable from the App Store. It seems that the experience of
acquiring the app and then using it directly from the UI is a pretty big
part of the value for iPhone users (I wouldn't know, I use a Blackberry,
for which the closest thing to an app is using the shiny back as a
mirror). This is great in one sense - instead of the endless worry about
marketing your web-based experience in amongst the noise of the web, you
can let the App Store take some of the strain out of the supply chain
for you.
So, given that most people will not have the luxury of cross-platform
development - and I absolutely love the Historical Maps app, by the way,
even though I can't use it - how would you make the choice between
satisfying the quite clearly-defined and restrictive needs of the
community of iPhone users and the broader imperative to reach as many
people as possible (viz. Andy's previous point)? Is it better to design
the open, standards-compliant web experience first and then resolve it
down to an iPhone app, or are they completely different animals?
Would be really interested to hear what people think.
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Andy Mabbett
Sent: 19 August 2010 12:27
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Historical Maps IPhone App
On 19 August 2010 08:31, Chris Speed <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A small JISC grant has enabled a group of us to give public access to
historical maps from the National Library of Scotland and Landmark (OS
maps).
> It's a free app for the iPhone at the moment and if we have enough
success we're hoping to encourage Landmark to release the maps for the
entire UK.
That's a limited set of "public" you're giving access to. Instead of
walled-garden apps, why not make a standards-complaint,
mobile-friendly website? Preferably using HTML5.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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