One of the neatest tricks in all the Harry Potter novels is the Marauder’s Map. Armed with this magical tell-all, wizard-in-training Harry could see the whereabouts of anyone inside the Hogwarts school. And thanks to some clever technology, visitors to several Smithsonian museums can take advantage of their own magical map.

Through the use of wireless handheld devices, visitors to the Smithsonian Information Center at the Castle, the National Museum of American History, the National Postal Museum, and the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center can track their progress through the exhibits. (A fifth museum, the National Museum of Natural History, is slated to adopt the technology in mid- to late July.) Rent one of the handhelds, and you get not only a map but also an interactive list of exhibits, guided tours to follow, even instant messaging and location tracking for other members of your group—a great feature when it’s time to round up the kids.

The Smithsonian isn’t alone; other museums are busily implementing a variety of forms of ubiquitous (a.k.a. pervasive) computing to assist customers. Some would argue that their efforts are not truly pervasive—the zenith of which would be environments that simply react to people without direct input or cumbersome interfaces. However, what the museums learn about things such as delivering personalized multimedia content to mobile users, luring visitors to lesser-known exhibits and identifying how people react to interactive surroundings will help create applications for retail, entertainment and other industries.

Big SI

Smithsonian’s map is but one part of the SIguide (pronounced "sigh guide") initiative, an ambitious two-year pilot project slated to launch by the end of the summer that will study handhelds’ effectiveness in the museums. My Le Ducharme, SIguide’s project leader, says she hopes the project will produce a better museum experience for visitors, allowing them to "spend more time here and learn more." She notes, for instance, that the average visitor spends only a few minutes in the huge gems and minerals hall. She hopes that an interactive guide might prompt visitors to spend more time in this and other underutilized exhibits.

SIguide represents a significant project in pervasive computing. With its 1,000 handhelds in place, it is "by many orders of magnitude the largest project of its type in the world," according to Ted Paschkis, CEO of Wivid Systems, which developed the Smithsonian’s system.

In addition to the maps, the handhelds will link visitors to hundreds of video clips and pictures; in due time, they will also invite users to go on scavenger hunts for objects throughout the museums. Museumgoers can even use the handhelds to view interactive video clips of items that people can’t actually see, such as the inside of Thomas Jefferson’s desk. (Retailers and others could imagine similar technology as a sales tool, perhaps showing customers a video of a product in action on their PDA or cell phone.)