Pompidou turns to NFC, Facebook to attract teens
Consequences of kids Googling 'teen gallery' not considered
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
France's Pompidou Centre is opening a "Teen Gallery" next year, with NFC tags on every exhibit and the inevitable Facebook connection to draw in Paris youth.
The idea is to put tags beside every exhibit, so punters can wave their phone nearby to get more information on the artist and work. But even the French won't have NFC handsets by next year so the Centre is going to hand them out in the hope that youth will upload comments to their own Facebook pages, all in the interests of getting young Parisians to talk about art.
Sagem will be providing the handsets, which have an NFC module to interact with tags around the exhibits and be able to download additional information. More crucially the custom application allows the user to make comments about the work which are then uploaded to their own Facebook account, along with a link to the artist's other work and information about the Gallery.
Mauricio Estrada-Muñoz, project manager for youth at the centre, told RFID Journal: "We will be the first institution with a gallery specific for teenagers", which is arguable, but it's probably the first one with a Facebook connection.
And the idea is probably quite a good one, though the use of RFID might be overkill for something that could equally-well be done with a QR Code. But a project using such old technology wouldn't qualify for a grant from the French Government's department of industry, not to mention free handsets from Sagem, so the technology gets shoehorned in regardless of the alternatives available. ®
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
COMMENTS
This seems to be a recurring theme with RFID in general.
Passports, public transport passes, access passes, even key-system keys, car keys, what-have-you. As they're wireless such systems can be much easier abused or even be used unintentionally and by accident, incurring charges, identity theft damage, and all sorts of nasty side effects that you the user essentially no control over. This serves as a good vehicle to make people more afraid of technology, leaving them feeling less empowered to take advantage of these supposedly wonderful techno-advances. So why do it?
What is the compelling business case to go with more complex technology over simpler, cheaper, more user-friendly alternatives that it gets pushed through regardless every time?
it ain't broke, but they still have to fix it
"What is the compelling business case to go with more complex technology over simpler, cheaper, more user-friendly alternatives that it gets pushed through regardless every time?"
Sponsorship. The museums/galleries don't have enough cash, so they look for a sponsor who offers them money if they agree to set things up so that punters have to buy the technology to get the best "user experience". Since the s**theads who run our governments are convinced that the best way to win votes is to offer solutions to non-existent problems like the "digital divide" (instead of just running the country properly and staying out of our way) there are also handouts and grants to encourage this sort of behaviour. Paid for by our taxes.
We're talking about "plaques" here, aren't we?
"What is the compelling business case to go with more complex technology over simpler, cheaper, more user-friendly alternatives that it gets pushed through regardless every time?"
Indeed. Pass the Occam's Razor.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
