New Powerhouse Museum WordPress plugin launched

Seb Chan and the team at Powerhouse Museum in Sydney certainly likes to make sure they stay one step ahead of everyone else in the museums sector, and they’ve proved it once again with the launch of a custom WordPress plugin that interfaces with their collections information through the API (which, of course, they have had up and running for ages).

Here’s a little test.

  • Photograph of Wunderlich rainwater capping with grotesque animal antefix
    A7437-28/83 Photographic print, black & white, rainwater capping with grotesque animal antefix designed and made by Wunderlich Limited, E A Bradford, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, c 1930
  • Audio tapes of talks by Mr Paul Trainor 1986.
    2005/187/24 Audio tapes with cases (2), talk by Paul Trainor recorded in 1986, audio tape / plastic, made in Japan, used in Australia, 1986
  • Concept drawings for the 4th Generation 'Millennium' train
    2006/52/7 Drawings (3), concept sketches and renderings for the 4th generation 'Millennium' train, paper, made by TDI (Transport Design International) and Design Resource Australia, Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia, 1995-1997
  • Tin plate toy carriage from train set
    85/2587-27 Toy carriage, from train set, tin plate, made by Meccano, England, c. 1937
  • A Korean rain gauge
    92/156 Rain gauge, cast iron, designed by Jang Yeong-sil 1442, made in Korea, 1990
  • Photograph of Avro Cadet trainer aircraft A6-17
    88/289-964 Photographic glass plate negative, Avro Cadet trainer aircraft A6-17, Clyde Engineering Pty Ltd, Australia, 1941
  • Photograph of first Avro trainer A6-15
    88/289-145 Photographic glass plate negative, first Avro Cadet trainer aircraft A6-15, Clyde Engineering Pty Ltd, Australia, 1939
  • Rain Clouds
    P3548-291 Photographic negative, rain clouds, glass / gelatin, photographed by James Short and Henry Chamberlain Russell, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Sydney Observatory, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1891-1900
  • Glass plate negative of Como Hotel, Como with Illawarra train line
    2008/165/1-126 Glass plate negative (1 of 193), Como Hotel, Como with Illawarra railway line, glass, photographer possibly Arthur Phillips, Australia, c. 1900
  • Tea strainer with stand made by Silverbrite Electroplating Company
    2005/66/25 Tea strainer with stand, from the 'Perfection A.1 Electro Plate' series, electroplated nickel silver, made by Silverbrite Electroplating Company, Redfern, New South Wales, Australia, c.1930
  • Length of toy train track, made by Mettoy
    85/2577-325 Length of toy train track, tin plate, made by Mettoy, England, 1934-1954
  • Photograph of Avro Anson trainer aircraft
    88/289-969 Photographic glass plate negative, Avro Cadet trainer aircraft, A6-3, A6-15, A6-23, in workshops, Clyde Engineering Pty Ltd, Australia, 1940
  • Locomotive No.1 which hauled the first passenger train in New South Wales
    7949 Locomotive, steam, No. 1, hauled the first passenger train in New South Wales in 1855, made by Robert Stephenson and Company, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, 1854
  • Photograph of Avro cadet trainer plane A6-17
    88/289-147 Photographic glass plate negative, Avro Cadet trainer aircraft A6-17 on float, Clyde Engineering Pty Ltd, Australia, 1941
  • Photograph of parts for grain stripper
    88/289-213 Photographic glass plate negative, parts for Clyde horsedrawn grain stripper, Clyde Engineering Pty Ltd, Australia, 1900-1940
  • Length of toy train track, made by Mettoy
    85/2577-324 Length of toy train track, tin plate, made by Mettoy, England, 1934-1954
  • Malietoa supporters trained by Lieutenant Gaunt, Apia, Samoa, 1899
    85/1284-1481 Photographic negative, Malietoa supporters trained by Lieutenant Gaunt marching through the streets of Apia, gelatin / glass, photographer unknown, published by Kerry and Co., Apia, Upolu, Samoa, March 1899
  • Length of toy train track, made by Mettoy
    85/2577-323 Length of toy train track, tin plate, made by Mettoy, England, 1934-1954
  • 'Moraine' sofa by Zaha Hadid
    2005/180/1 Sofa and cover, 'Moraine', polyurethane foam/ leather/ canvas, designed by Zaha Hadid, England, 2000, made by Sawaya & Moroni, Italy, 2004
  • Length of toy train track, made by Mettoy
    85/2577-326 Length of toy train track, tin plate, made by Mettoy, England, 1934-1954

More automatic tagging tools discovered and tested

I’ve just discovered two more services – Alchemy and Zemanta – and also a couple of extra WordPress plugins to use these and automatically suggest and add tags.  One simply uses the Alchemy API, but by far the most advanced I’ve uncovered yet is Simple Tags which pulls in tags from Local Tags (I think that’s a list of tags already used), Yahoo, OpenCalais, Alchemy, Zemanta, and Tag the Net.  So here’s a bit more text to test them out, focussed on geographic terms …

Hatfield has been in the papers again this week.  It’s where I went to secondary school.  I used to cycle 6 miles each way, each day, including the climb up Bell Bar (near Potters Bar) which was about half way from Cuffley.

More OpenCalais – testing, testing!

Advanced warning: this is just a test post for myself, so only read on if you’re interested in the Calais service, and geotagging in particular …

I’ve also now found and installed the ‘official’ Tagaroo plugin from Calais.  Here’s a quick test to see how it works.

Unlike the others it automatically suggests tags and even photos that match, constantly updating as you type.  So already I’m seeing loads related to Calais, northern France.

But what if I type an obscure location, such as the tiny hamlet of Windmill, which is just near one of my favourite holiday locations at Trevone, near Padstow.  Well, it certainly seems to have recognised something as a location, as it has automatically suggested Cornwall, but frustratingly they are all converted into plain text tags, so I can’t see if it just thinks it is about a windmill, rather than if it has detected that Windmill is a location.

There’s even a drop-down that lets me restrict the types of tag, but the options are just ‘All’,  ‘Social’ and ‘Country’.  And Country only returns France.

So let’s give it something simpler – I grew up in the village of Cuffley and near there there is a tiny place called Brickendon, which I’m not aware of as meaning anything else!  But neither Auto Tagger nor Tagaroo have spotted that one.  Shame, I wonder what the data source is that they are using for geography, and how detailed it is?

Oddly the Calais Auto Tagger mentioned in a previous post seems to pull out things slightly differently, especially locations.  For example it has actually given me “Cuffley, United Kingdom”.

Oh, and one last thing.  If you have Tagaroo and Auto Tagger both installed, it looks like Auto Tagger overrides anything you add from Tagaroo

OpenCalais tagging service and WordPress plugins

I’ve just installed two WordPress Plugins to test out automated tagging systems. I’m also really interested in automated geotagging, but not sure if that’s available. For example, if I say that this post is about London, does it add lat long tags? Could these be used to create a map?

These are the two plugins:

The autotagger suggested the following for this post (before I entered this sentence of course):

World Wide Web
PHP programming language
Computing
Blog software
Content management systems
WordPress
Information
Geographic information systems
Web 2.0
Geotagging
Tag
London,Greater London,United Kingdom
London
automated tagging systems
I had already added: OpenCalais, tags, tagger, automatic

Yourls self hosted shorturl service

Just discovered a self-hosted php/mysql url shortening tool – Yourls – which is giving me some ideas about a shorturl/permalink service for the museums sector, prompted when Flickr wouldn’t let me either post the full link to an image on the Imperial War Museum collections database, nor let me post a bit.ly or tinyurl shorturl.

Anyway, this is just a test to see how it works, and the WordPress widget to automatically post to Twitter (a bit crazy testing it with a domain the length of catchingtherain.com of course!).

Imperial War Museum panorama

Another experimental panorama, this time at the Imperial War Museum. Most of the main attractions are set as highlights, but Microsoft Silverlight is very frustrating in that it doesn’t allow users to hover over something in the scene and find out more. In fact it’s not very good at displaying information at all – I’d have thought it would at least show captions from the titles and descriptions that you set!

Wait a little while and it should automatically go through the highlights, or just click on the thumbnails to the right (again, there must be something not quite right with a piece of software if you have to give people guidance on how to do the basics!)

I’d suggest opening full screen for maximum impact, or see the original on photosyth.net