Battleship Island -  A former coal mining facilty owned Mitsubishi Motors that was at one time the most densely populated place on earth (13,000 people per square kilometer). Viceland, the web outlet of the Vice media conglomerate, takes us on a quick tour and offers up some really cool pictures of this “rotting metropolis.” For those of you that are into industrial lookin’ living spaces, check this out for sure.

Goofing Off Boasts Productivity – Another interesting study about how taking a break from work to check out the Internet is good for getting things done. I’d be curious to see the results of a study on those of us who “goof off” for a living and take breaks from goofing off by filing papers and organizing their inboxes.

$23/month iPhone plan – That would rule!

100 Awesome Facebook Apps – Because I know you love/hate a good/bad Facebook app as much as I do. Notable apps include Picasa (photo manipulation), Goodread (personal book tracking) and “What language should you learn” (self explanatory). There are 97 more for your enjoy/disdain ment.

Monday Music – “My Maudlin Career” by Camera Obscura. Title track off their new album.

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Filed under: Art, Current Events, Marketing

Hello, my name is Kate… and I’m a social media addict. I blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr…you name it. Whew. I feel better.

Lucky for me, social media has become an integral part of the way museums create an interactive experience for the museum visitor, especially here at the IMA.

That said, we at the IMA would like to invite all our blog readers and fellow bloggers to peel your eyes from the computer screens for one night, and put a face to the local blogs you love to read. (Don’t worry, we’ll have wi-fi so you can live-blog and tweet to your heart’s content!)

Come one, come all...

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Filed under: Current Events, New Media, Technology

To say that social media is a growing field would be quite the understatement. Whether you’re an avid tweeter blowing up my Twitter feed (cough cough, John Mayer!) or a soccer mom that uploads the latest school pictures onto Flickr, almost everyone I know actively participates in at least one social networking site – even my grandma is on Facebook.

But it’s not only individuals using these sites. Here at the IMA, as most of you know, we embrace social media as a useful tool in reaching our audiences and fulfilling our mission. And we’re not the only ones – LACMA, SFMoMa, and Walker Art Center are just a couple of our peers actively engaging online audiences. Even the Art Institution of Chicago recently announced here, that they’ll soon be launching a Twitter account.

But as museums and museum employees continue to grow their online activity – both personal and institutional – we’re faced with the challenge of exploring policies and guidelines online activity. Should there be employee policies in place for personal use of such sites? Should museums implement a clearly detailed policy for institutional use of such sites? And if so, what would either one of these policies look like and what purposes would they serve? Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Marketing, Musings, New Media, Technology

BrainRules.net – A companion website to a book with the same name (minus the .net). On this site, Dr. John Medina lays out “12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school.” The site is video heavy and each gets progressively more interesting. The “Stress” and “Vision” sections are standouts.

Umbrella Art – Given the weather today outside the museum, I was pleased to stumble upon a collection of umbrella art put together by crookedbrains.net. As much as I like umbrellas and how they make me think of Mary Poppins/Julie Andrews, this freezing rain nonsense is harshing the good Spring cycling vibe.

IndyCultureMatters.org – The IMA is one of the cultural institutions behind this organization and is urging its employees to take off work to attend the rally that is happening April 20 on Monument Circle.  Show your support for Indy culture and attend the rally. There is also a Facebook group.

Twitter for Plants and ArtBabble.org – Just came accross two cool examples of Twitter integration. The first was Botanicalls.com and how they are using the micro-blogging service to get status updates from plants. The second was the new ArtBabble.org page that now includes a feed of everyone on the Twitter-sphere tweeting about ArtBabble. I can’t believe I just used the word “Twitter-sphere.”

Monday Music – “The Ark” by Dr. Dog. 38 more days and we’ll have something…

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Filed under: Current Events, Marketing, New Media

A snapshot from Pepsi's real-time keyword swarm from SXSW

Take half of Twitter’s activity base, bring them together and you have SXSW.  This group of people are just some of the many that are driving what we will all know as the real-time web.  To the left you can see a screen shot I took this morning from a real-time keyword swarm driven by Twitter and SXSW attendees (compliments of Phil’s Pharmacy).

Twitter has been the source of many of these popups.  You can find a real-time evolving tag cloud of what’s popular right now, or if you are a finance junkie like me, get bleeding edge news and opinion on every stock in your portfolio.  Real-time updates on the real-time web anyone?  Finally, bring them all together on your desktop with TweetDeck.

Bringing it all together with TweetDeck

Facebook has jumped on the boat as well with the recent updates to user’s profile pages.  The emphasis has moved solely to the latest updates from your friends. Video sharing site UStream.tv has pushed the envelope by offering free streaming of live video to anyone.

Facebook's recent changes to promote real-time activity

Internet users are being groomed to have an expectation of receiving information as it is generated.  In an age where e-mail is the new snail mail, could a start-up with a decent semantics engine make Reuters tremble?

Filed under: Technology