I’ve been quiet on the blog over the past month, it seems that I’m at that stage in the PhD where writing anything AT ALL is exceptionally difficult.  So here are some quick and dirty bullet points of things I have found fascinating this month.

• Obviously, the procrastination monster and my love of all things sport meant that the Olympics and Paralympics have been the biggest thing ever in my life over the past month. The BBC’s amazing coverage as well as Chanel 4’s brilliance of challenging perceptions and of course Clare Balding made me a very happy bunny.  The BBC also shared some mega stats and insights around the digital side of the Olympics coverage:The story of the digital Olympics: streams, browsers, most watched, four screens
• Then there is Alex Balfour’s slideshare  (I’m sure you’ve already seen it ) of the breakdown of the online traffic statistics and facts from the official digital channels, website and mobile of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

• Accidently walking past a brilliant interactive sound installation called Phantom Railings in Malet Street Gardens, Bloomsbury.  I’m getting quite excited about the potential for interactive sound installations in museums for visitor engagement, so literally walking into this after conversations about digital sound installations was a very pleasant thing. The Fad site has a nice post about it. I love the Policemen having a go in the video above!

• The British Museum have released their new collection online interface (in beta). This initial release includes the free text basic search, search results, object details page, and a new image gallery.  Here’s my search on Roman Spoons.  I love how they have improved the images in the search results. And the object-page layout is pretty swish.  You can check out Matthew Cock’s a blog post about it.

• I had a bit of a play with Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook I love that the stats from mine indicate that my significant words are: ‘museum’ and ‘gin’. Explains a lot.  Steve over at Big Data Toolkit has a nice post on it.

• Things have been busy over at IWM Social Interpretation the iOS app “Scan and Share” (done diss the name it was the best we could come up with) is live (android is coming soon), the website pages are live (in beta) and we are up and running in the gallery spaces with QR codes and digital ‘kiosks’ both in IWM London and IWM North.  Really highlighting what you can and can’t achieve with a 1 year R&D project.

• I’ve spent a lot of my time in the Grant Museum stalking visitors for my PhD data collection. Which was fun! Lots of sitting next to odd dead things whilst drawing maps and observing folk. I’d quite happily move into the Grant Museum tomorrow for ever. And that just gets me excited about the prospect of a geek in residence….

• Ignite London is back! We are pleased to announce #igniteLDN7 on 15th November 2012.  You can submit your awesome talks now!

Even quicker Links

• Digital Games and Pigs, whats not to love? Playing with Pigs
• Nice post by Shelley Mannion on AR applications and delivering value for museum visitors
• Guardian piece on Imapct – Impact factor: researchers should define the metrics that matter to them
• Connecting Light up at Hadrain’s wall
• The impact good research has on other arts orgs digital strategies
• Making the Case for Creativity and Experimentation as a Continuing Value for Museums

Normal bloggage about museum digital stuff and public engagement will commence shortly… hopefully.