I’m in the final 24 hours of gathering data from Flickr the Commons. From the 191,683 photos (in October it was 188,772) 106,352 are queried through the flickr.photos.getInfo method. The script will ask retrieve data from 300 photos every five minutes. The Flickr API only allows 3600 calls per hours so better not cross that border.
Now onwards to some quick statistics from the 106,352 photos:
| Occurrences | Tag |
| 89768 | Aviation |
| 88964 | SDASM |
| 82037 | aeronautics |
| 22489 | San Diego Air and Space Museum |
| 9713 | flight |
| 5823 | San Diego |
| 5185 | Ryan |
| 5047 | Convair |
| 4754 | Consolidated |
| 4709 | Aeropace Factories |
The idea of the virtual museum is not new. Many museums experimented with it for many years. From 360 degree panorama’s in QuickTime to virtual worlds in Second Life. It never really caught on in my opinion due to the lack of decent technology, internet speed, quantity and quality of digitized art. Now there is Art Project.
Google describes this innovative project as follows: The Art Project is a collaboration between Google and some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums. Powered by a broad, connected suite of Google technologies, the world’s great works of art and museums are now within reach to an unprecedented global audience. This unique collaboration enables people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.
Virtual visitors are now able to see the amazing detail of the digitized art and are able to retrieve more information about the object. I wonder how the digital versus the physical gaze upon the Mona Lisa will be experienced.
Found this interesting concept from Syzygy Lab. A few years ago students at the University experimented with social interaction on TV and various widgets. Back then I did not believe in the whole concept of personalized television. This is of course from a personal perspective: I rarely watch television alone (e.g. a soccer match) so a personalized screen for one person while being in a group of six would be strange. The introduction of the tablet device could solve this problem but will everyone in the room have such a device? and what kind of effect will this have on the experience of watching television with a group of people?
