The Hammond-Harwood House is lucky enough to have interns and volunteers who use their unique skills and talents to accomplish projects that add immeasurably to the experiences we are able to offer to the general public. One current example is summer intern Jeran Halfpap, a rising senior at St. Mary’s College, who created a 3-dimensional digital model of the Hammond-Harwood House that is now available for viewing on our website. Below, Jeran talks a bit about the technology that allowed him to create the model.
By Jeran Halfpap, the Intern Who Does Stuff
Using modern technology and software is a great way to keep museums in the public eye, and to engage kids with the topics. It brings the “wow!” factor to the table, and is sometimes just plain fun.
With more powerful computers, and more and more developers making new, more powerful software, the tech world is getting more advanced. Since April 2010, a new web standard called HTML5 has been brought into the mainstream. It is still being developed, but the world is starting to see more and more of it, and it is promising. It will replace HTML4 in time, and even has the potential to replace Adobe Flash, which is clunkier and slower to load. Modern web browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera are all focusing on getting HTML5 to work, to bring fancy new content to you faster! Internet Explorer will get it eventually, but it’s a bit behind the game.
With HTML5 getting more popular it is important to take advantage of the opportunities that it provides! This means updating websites and bringing our educational sites into the future. The Hammond-Harwood House has recently gotten such an update; using WebGL and a service called p3d.in, we have embedded a 3-d model on our website! It took me a while, but after gathering pictures of the house and stretching them out to fit the model, you can spin and zoom into the building! With all new technologies, you might have to upgrade your software, which is usually a simple update.
