Free website uptime monitoring
Posted on 2 July 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Larger arts organizations will already have website monitoring systems in place—but this might be of interest to smaller oragnizations who feel they cannot afford such a service.
Now that all IT4Arts members have links to their sites in our Current Members page, I know that some of your sites occassionally go down because they show up as broken links in our Admin information. Wouldn’t you like to be the first to know when your site goes down?
Pingdom is a well-regarded uptime monitoring service that has until now been a chargable service. This week Pingdom has announced a free monitoring service with good features and a few limitations.
Find out what ReadWriteWeb has to say about the free offering here.
Visit Pingdom here.
Update: We are now using Pingdom to monitor the IT4Arts website. As they used to boast in French restaurants, Le patron mange ici.
AmbITion/Digital Opportunities Roadshow agenda and details
Posted on 30 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Here’s how the organisers describe Organisations 2.0, the RFO in the Digital Age: “This AmbITion Roadshow is part of the Art Of Digital London, a programme for Arts Council London RFO’s and other interested arts organisations in London who want to enhance their digital strategies, use digital tools effectively and share resources.
“The AmbITion Roadshow is a day of exploration, exposition, conversation and critical thinking around the digital opportunities for organisations as you think about artistic practice, organisational and audience development and business models in our digital age.”
The Roadshow is followed the next day by a Symposium: Do The Arts Speak Digital?
RFO’s can sign up and review the agenda, the venue, and other details here.
The AmbITion Roadshow is supported by both IT4Arts and IT4Communities.
Free online PDF reader, editor, form filler, and form designer
Posted on 29 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
PDF files are increasingly common. Most of the time most of us use them in read-only mode—but they are even more powerful when used in read-write mode. The trouble is, software that allows us to write to PDF files tends to be expensive. Adobe Acrobat, probably the most powerful PDF manipulator, is very good and commensurately expensive. So I am always on the lookout for free alternatives.
Here’s one I want to share with you—PDFescape. Here’s how its owners describe it, “PDFescape is a new way to open PDF files and escape from the typical software requirements for using the de facto document file format … without downloads or installations … watermarks … registration … With PDFescape, you can fill in PDF forms, add text and graphics, add links, and even add new form fields to a PDF file.”
While registration isn’t required, it’s probably a good ideas—there’s no charge and there are advantages.
I would give PDFescape’s editing interface 7/10 for usuability but it works. You can easily upload a PDF file, work with it, then save your changes and download the new PDF. If you register, you can store files online, too.
This is not a perfect solution for editing PDFs but it’s a good one. And the price is right—especially when IT budgets are tight.
Try it out here.
Small arts organizations can now connect and collaborate free of charge
Posted on 23 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Another blog posting on the topic of free software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) for arts organisations.
According to Socialtext, “The Socialtext collaboration platform allows organizations of all sizes to collaborate faster, decide faster and change faster. The more aware your people are of what colleagues are doing, the broader your people’s participation in conversations, and the more easily new insights spread across your organization, the faster your business can respond to changing customer expectations and business conditions.”
Socialtext is a highly integrated enterpirse collaboration platform that gets good reviews. Now, it is offering its premium product free of charge for organizations with less than 50 employees.
Socialtext integrated platform provides your organisation with
- social networking
- social messaging (in-house Twitter)
- wiki workspaces (in-house wikis to facilitate knowledge sharing)
- webblogs (in-house blogs)
- distributed spreadsheets (collaborate on spreadsheets)
- collaboration dashboard (each person has a personal space where all collaboration tools are surfaced)
A couple of caveats:
- Socialtext admit that their decision to use a “freemium” pricing model for small organizations is a consequence of the current financial situation. Ultimately, they would like to turn all freemium customers into paying customers—so, at some point, you might become a marketing target though as a not-for-profit you might be able to circumnavigate the overtures.
- Socialtext is a rich collaboration environment that would be the envy of many organisations—large and small—but do not underestimate the change management challenges that introducing such an environment brings. And do not underestimate the impact of such a collaboration platform on the culture of your organization.
That said, this is worth investigating. And you can’t beat the price!
See how Socialtext sets out its offer here.
Learn more about Socialtext here.
Read ReadWriteWeb’s coverage here.
National Theatre broadcasts live to cinema screens around the world
Posted on 22 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
NT Live is an exciting new initiative to broadcast live performances of plays onto cinema screens worldwide. The four show pilot season will launch with Phèdre, with Helen Mirren, Margaret Tyzack and Dominic Cooper.
On 25 June the performance of Phèdre will be filmed in high definition and broadcast via satellite to approximately 65 cinemas and arts centres, reaching a widespread audience live across the UK. Tickets will cost £10. Over 200 venues around the world will also screen the production.
Learn more about the rest of the NT Live season here.
Read The Guardian’s coverage here.
Read Playbill’s coverage here.
South London Gallery Joins IT4Arts
Posted on 19 June 2009 by Martin Black | Be the first to comment
We’re delighted to welcome South London Gallery as the latest member of IT4Arts. They got in touch on the recommendation of Dulwich Picture Gallery. They are using IT to manage all their contact data – visitors, members, artistic and suppliers - to run guest lists for events and to make their collection of contemporary art available on the web. It’s housed in a wonderfully light and airy purpose-built Victorian gallery just a short walk from Peckham town centre. They have all sorts of plans for moving forward their use of IT and would like to pick the brains of other IT4Arts members about what can be achieved.
The Vast Majority of Complaints are not about what’s on stage…
Posted on 17 June 2009 by Martin Black | Be the first to comment
“The West End accommodates between 13 and 14 million people, [and generates] just over £400 million a year. The average spend per head on programmes, ice cream, sweets and gin and tonic, it is about £1.50 per person. At the National Theatre, where ticket prices are lower and where you might imagine audiences aren’t going with such full pockets, the average spend per head is over £3,” he added.
“It is a much more comfortable experience to go to the National Theatre than it might be to go to one of the theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue. The drinks are reasonably priced, you don’t have to wait 20 minutes to order a drink in the interval, you may not have the line for the bathroom.”
He added: “Any theatre manager will tell you that the vast majority of complaints [from the public] are not about what is on stage, they are about facilities, getting through on the phone, finding their way.”
Who said this? Read more at The Stage.
Explore the National Gallery with your iPhone
Posted on 16 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Recently, we blogged about the Brooklyn Museum launching a Mobile Collection for the iPhone. Now it turns out London’s National Gallery is embracing mobile technology, too, with its Love Art iPhone app available from iTunes. The app features about 250 art treasures, with videos, audio commentary, zoom-able high-res images, and galleries and themed tours.
Learn more here.
Be sure to visit the developer’s site and watch the video—and check out the screen grabs.
Banksy in secret exhibition stunt at Bristol Museum
Posted on 12 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Banksy is a natural self-publicist. Now the graffiti artist has pulled off an audacious stunt amid tight secrecy to stage his biggest ever exhibition.
The reason the Bristol Museum was closed was kept secret from top council officials who knew there would be a summer exhibition but did not know what it would be until this morning.
Read the BBC’s coverage here.
Lazard star banker to head New York Philharmonic
Posted on 11 June 2009 by Martin Black | Be the first to comment
Did you see this in your Financial Times? You need to register with the online FT (for free) to read it – well worth doing, given its excellent arts coverage. They have RSS feeds at a good level of granularity, too, such as Arts & Weekend, Theatre and Dance, and Arts & Weekend, Visual Arts.
The 10 commandments of social media
Posted on 11 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Social media continues to be an area of interest to IT4Arts members as they seek ways to grow their audiences.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible. In this to-the-point Fast Company article, he sets out his 10 commandments for winning with social media.
Read it here—and don’t forget to download your free Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball!
Overdrive 2009 interactive social media map
Posted on 9 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
Overdrive Interactive is an American online marketing services firm that helps companies create lasting connections with their target audiences and customers using Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Online Media.
They have developed an interactive social media map that neatly sets out the Web 2.0 landscape. You might already know most of what’s on the map—but you might also find it useful to have all the information in one place in a tidy interactive format.
You can download the map free of charge here.
How do I know when there’s something new on IT4Arts?
Posted on 8 June 2009 by Martin Black | Be the first to comment
If you’re thinking there must be a better way to find out when something has been posted here on the IT4Arts website than remembering to look at it every once in a while, well, yes, there are two better ways. Do you use RSS feeds? You can set up an RSS feed to give you updates from the IT4Arts website’s blog. (If you’re new to RSS feeds, make yourself a My Yahoo! page and they’re very simple to set up using Add Content). Do you use Twitter? There’s now an IT4Arts on Twitter. Follow it and the first 140 characters of the title of any new IT4Arts website blog postings will automatically appear there. Both these approaches only apply to new blog postings. So how do you find out about other types of website content when it appears? Well, we’ll try to make a blog posting to say when anything else important (like speaker material from a workshop) is put on the website.
Amb:IT:ion programme
Posted on 8 June 2009 by Martin Black | Be the first to comment
If you want to know more about the AmbITion change programme for the arts and cultural sector funded by Arts Council England, helping organisations achieve their 21st century sustainability ambitions through implementing integrated IT and digital developments—and many people at the IT4Arts planning session did—then please look here.
Livekick delivers concert tickets through powerful search, geo, social tools
Posted on 8 June 2009 by Don Morrison | Be the first to comment
ReadWriteWeb provides a good introduction to recently launched Livekick, “In short, Livekick mashes up geographical data, data from music listening and sharing sites, and data from concert ticket sites, and information and content from many other sources to create a perfect storm of concert-attending efficiency.” Livekick’s tag line is, “Never miss a live concert again!”
Not surprisingly, Livekick is focussed on pop music in the US—but the principle could be applied to any kind of music anywhere and, with a little thought, to live performances in any area of the arts.
Food for thought. Check it out here.
By the way, if you’re interested in Web 2.0, mashups and the like, I recommend you put ReadWriteWeb in your favourite RSS reader. There’s something of interest almost every day.
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