Tour a Museum with your iPhone, Toura Founder Aaron Radin Explains How

Toura founder Aaron Radin was walking around the MoMA when he came up with an idea that could have made the non-profit organization more profitable: a smart phone application loaded with content to enhance the museum experience. Since its launch in 2009 Toura's hand-held guides have led visitors through such venues as the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. With a publishing platform that's inexpensive and easy to maintain, Toura hopes to convert keepers of historical artifacts into early adopters of technology. On that fateful day at the MoMA Radin was staring at artist Joan Miro's referential attack on artistic conventions and wishing that the exhibit came with more footnotes. "I wanted to learn more," he said, so he got out his phone and "started looking stuff up. It enhanced my experience, but it wasn't ideal." The internet has an endless stream of pictures, artist bios and similar works, but only if you know where to look. What Radin needed was the knowledge of a museum docent and the multimedia resources of the Web in one place. Radin knew that museums had access to plenty of content, but lacked the funding and technical skills to publish it in the right context. It was too bad, because that kind of content was "greatly enhanced by being in a mobile application versus just looking at a website," Radin said. If only he could make something that was more like iTunes, where the content was easy to find and where users could instantly pay with a credit card. "People expect to pay for content on mobile devices," he pointed out. But Radin had discovered the limitations of mobile publishing while syndicating video and text content for the CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group where he used to work. At the time he had to retro-fit the content for different handsets and even then, the carriers had limited ways to promote their applications. "Publishers shouldn't have to care" whether the Android is currently more popular than the iPhone, he said. "You limit your audience by not publishing to multiple platforms." Radin solved these problems by creating the Mobile App Producer (MAP): a scalable, browser-based publishing platform with a content management system similar to WordPress or MovableType. Museum administrators can add, re-size and crop images, upload videos, create Google maps and edit text without using any HTML. As soon as they hit publish, the content appears on all mobile platforms, from the Android to the iPad. Readers can see what's in the various wings of the museum, search for more information on a particular piece of artwork and share what they find with friends on Facebook and Twitter. The museums can easily promote their own application to a captive audience of ticketholders. In July the company created a mobile guide for the "Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers" exhibit at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (pictured right on the iPhone 4). The mobile applications will eventually replace the handy audio tour headsets that museums loan their patrons using what Radin describes as "antiquated hardware that's custom-built rather than mass-produced." In other words, the old headsets are expensive to make. Toura, on the other hand, licenses the use of its platform for free and earns revenue only when museum patrons download the applications onto their own devices. When more people have smart phones and e-readers and more cities have mobile broadband networks to support them, Radin said the museums won't need the old hardware at all. As for Toura, Radin and his partner Sayoko Knight Teitelbaum have rounded up $1.5 million in seed funding from a group of angel investors and are sharing a handsome office space in the Flatiron District. They have 9 full-time employees, with additional sales consultants in France and Italy. With three dozen clients, they're currently looking for more developers and salespeople to create more museum, travel and shopping guides and, Radin hopes, to take the platform into the archives of magazines and newspapers.

Fishbowl

Tour a Museum with your iPhone, Toura Founder Aaron Radin Explains How

Devon Glenn

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Devon Glenn