Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Clash of Applegoo

It's really amazing to see the all out war between once former friends.  It's always sad to see how allies can disintegrate into enemies.  That's business, I suppose.  Just before Apple founder Steve Job's passing in 2011, he had realized the impending penetration of the mobile market by his once trusted friends at Google. The once deposed giant of mobiles Apple is now being dethroned by the new rivals Google, and the war is just heating up with the onslaught of lawsuits thrown at competitors by Apple. And vice-versa.

What's incredible is that Apple's victory lawsuit has produced even more dissatisfaction between the two frenemies.  While Samsung is livid that it had lost the case, Apple feels the compensation is insufficient.  What's the source of all this enmity?  Really it stems back to Apple's oligopolistic needs to squeeze out Google (partners of Samsung).  Where Apple once focused on building sleekly designed, Web-enabled devices, Google the benevolent search engine specialized indexed and delivered the Web’s billions of pages to users. The lines are now blurred -- Google (Android) is moving increasingly into the information communications industry and Apple (iPhone) is doing the same in moving into the realms of operating systems. It's hard to differentiate the two -- it will only continue to get fuzzier.   Until the digital world aligns itself, the lawsuits will continue.    In any profession, duplication usually means change is to come.   In the meantime, iPhone 5 has been released.  But looking at the two companies, there seems to be not much differentiation between the two.  Here's a look:

App Store vs. Google Play

Apple’s Siri vs. Google Now

Apple Maps vs. Google Map

Apple Passbook vs. Google Wallet

iCloud vs. Google Drive

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Can GLAM's be the Future of Cultural Institutions?

In 2008, the Cultural Heritage Information Professionals (CHIPs) made a proverbial dent in the world of information professionals.  A jointly sponsored event hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Florida State University, and the Ringling Museum of Art, library, archives, and museum experts explored the information needs of cultural heritage organizations with a purpose to transcend the traditional boundaries between galleries, libraries, archives, and museums that would better serve the information age.

'Digital convergence’ has been a key theme of libraries, archives, and museums and has had a track record of previous research.  It finally reached a tipping point in 2009 when three influential publications from different professions -- Library QuarterlyArchival Science, and Museum Management and Curatorship --collaborated on special issues examining the areas of convergence for educators and professionals working to meet user needs in libraries, archives, and museums.

These journals are definitely worth a read.  But I think what is critical here is a paved road for cultural institutions.  Daily cuts to budgets everywhere have forced cultural institutions to shut down.  Is it too much to ask that 'digital convergence' has blurred traditional distinctions between galleries, libraries, archives, and museums?   Could the future see art galleries, libraries, archives, and museums can collaborate and combine forces to better serve their users?

The answer is a must and a yes -- for the future of libraries, archives, and museums.   The digital world has collapsed the cultural institutions industries.  I urge you to take a closer look at how these collaborative networks crosses those boundaries in the same way these authors’ projects collapse the boundaries between these journals.