Links for 6 May 2012

Everyone working in the arts should gather round and watch Ze Frank. The man’s a genius, has a million and one things to teach about all sorts of things (but if we’re being prosaic, we could start with UGC-based online projects) and has been doing it long enough that people should really have caught on by now.

Here’s the Kickstarter video for his latest run of shows by way of introduction.

Arts/digital links

I’m really not sure what to make of The Space yet. I think it’s somewhere between a spectacularly ill-conceived distraction and a rather good thing. Probably it’s both but it’s too early to tell for sure. Either way, here’s an interesting piece about how it was built.

I came across a few arts data-related projects this month, including Cultural Data Project, Space, TRG Arts’ Community Programs and Open Cultuur Data. There are plenty of these things around – arts sectors internationally aren’t short of information, the trick is in making sure useful information is available to the right people at the right time.

This is an interestingly introspective post about the Map the Museum project, posing the question “should you release 5000 records with well produced photographs, and meticulously edited text? Or should you simply dump 50,000 online, warts and all?”

Some other things:

• BOP Consulting have produced a report for the Arts Council called Measuring the economic benefits of arts and culture
• WikiPaintings.org wants to be the most complete and well-structured online repository of fine art.
• All the projects from Culture Hack Day Scotland 2012
• A good piece from the FT about live opera being shown in cinemas and online
• Carl Plant has visualised Foursquare checkin data for UK Theatre venues
• I like Eve Nicol‘s approach to reviewing things via video. Here’s a good example.

Other links

Custom Report Sharing for Google Analytics and The Best Google Analytics Add-Ons. Can you tell what I’ve been working on a lot recently? On a completely different data/stats kick, Dan Hon’s post about data and diabetes was fascinating.

A couple of interesting collaborations from the world of journalism:

• Dutch newspapers plan joint ‘kiosk’ for digital content with readers able to buy articles on-demand or as part of a monthly subscription.
• Condé Nast teams up with Time et al on Android. 32 titles magazines available on Android for $14.99 a month

And while we’re on the subject, Writing in Newspapers and Magazines is worth reading for the George Clooney quote alone.

• Melissa Terras asks ‘Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it?‘ and finds that, if you want people to find and read your research, then the answer is ‘yes’.
• Mailchimp’s style guide for anyone writing copy for the company
• Startups, This Is How Design Works by Wells Riley is a handy guide for understanding design
• FAME , which gave people the chance to ‘win Twitter fame for a day’, was interesting while it lasted

Apps/services/etc

• Web: GatherContent, Wiggio, PromptDown, Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, Pocket
• iPhone: Walking Cycle Bell (because of this video), Tate Quiz Trail, ZX Plectrum, ASIP, The Eatery
• Podcasts: The Dinner Party, Risk, 99% Invisible
• Browser add-ons: Collusion

Finally…

I’ll leave you with the first video in a series by Rui Guerra who interviewed John Stack, Head of Tate Online about Tate’s online strategy and new website. Lots of interesting stuff in there.

See also Rui’s other videos with Rob Stein from the Indianapolis Museum of Art.