I posted this as a comment on the original post about “we want your ideas”, but that sort of got buried, so I’ll repost and add to it:
“Hand-held computing and historical walking tours/podcasts: How can we provide a platform independent multimedia experience that can be easily adopted by historic sites and towns?”
I would like to exchange ideas and experiences people have had creating mobile apps (iPhone, Android, or a more generic WebApp) for creating walking tours. When I have students work on walking tours right now, we tend to simply create downloadable podcasts and use the cover art function to display photos or maps. This works relatively well, but I have been wondering if there was a way to make this more dynamic. I’d also like find a way that this approach could be adopted at a low cost for museums to use within an exhibition.
Some background: Last May I was in Erfurt Germany and visited the new Jewish museum, which had an excellent walking tour of the exhibit that used iPod Touches in the place of an audio wand. The problem for me, however, was that it was clearly a “hacked” iPod app – or some sort of magic that I am unaware of that does not allow you to ever access the home screen. The app was “locked” in a sense. I looked up the company that designed the app and it is an entirely proprietary product that they create for museums. As such, it would be a large financial investment for smaller museums and historical societies that would like to offer such tours.
I know that there are others interested in mobile apps (or off-the-desktop-computing as the current turn of phrase is) and wouldn’t mind combining my interests here with others who are also interested in all things mobile.
#1 by Juliet DeVries on April 7, 2011 - 3:21 pm
Disclosure: I work for TourSphere.
Hi Jon –
Thanks for putting this out there. After hearing the exact same thing over and over from our clients we decided there needed to be an easy solution for the exact challenges you raise. So we built TourSphere.
TourSphere is unique for two reasons:
1. It is affordable (free to sign-up and build your tour – just pay monthly fee when you publish it to the public)
2. It is a very powerful, elegant DIY platform specifically for Museums and Historic sites.
Users can build their own tours Tours and publish them as web apps, iPhone apps or Android apps. Users own and control 100% of their content. We are hoping we help both large and small museums get their stories out there easier.
I would love it if you checked it out and shared your thoughts.
If you have any questions about our product or anything else we’re hearing from our clients please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Juliet DeVries
twitter/ @toursphere
(617)418-7214 x202
#2 by Larry Cebula on April 4, 2011 - 7:06 am
I am very interested in this topic as well. I attended the Museums and Mobile virtual conference two weeks ago (very worthwhile!) and came away with a few preliminary thoughts:
1. We don’t need another app for every museum and historic site any more than we need a different ereader for every book or a different software platform for every blog. We need ONE app, free or inexpensive, easy to use, and available across the major mobile platforms. A Blogger for mobile tours.
2. But using an app at all is a devil’s bargain. Users need to have the app on their phones. If they get to the museum or historic site and only then learn about the app (and that is how it is going to happen for most visitors) most won’t download it (even if you provide free wifi) and it doesn’t get used. Mobile web cannot do everything that an app can do but it can do plenty and it works with any mobile platform. Check out this wonderful mobile web exhibit guide from the Nelson Atkins–it looks just like a native app on a phone: www.nelson-atkins.org/desktopguide/
3. A bunch of commercial providers are charging into the mobile space but how many will be around in five years?
4. For God’s sake lets not use mobile to replicate the printed guide. This week I went on a neighborhood walking tour to test pilot a mobile guidebook on the Kindle app. It was pictures and text–an old person’s tour in a young person’s medium. Mobile tours should be interactive, use media, and be fun.
5. Speaking of which, I am thinking of using Scvngr, a “location based social gaming” system, with my students to create historical scavenger hunts.
6. So you create a mobile tour of a historic neighborhood–how does anyone know it is there?
7. Isn’t the most simple solution to create audio cell phone tours? I blogged about one at the Seattle Art Museum, the exhibit is still up and you can call the numbers in the post: northwesthistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/cell-phone-tours.html
#3 by mtebeau on April 2, 2011 - 3:45 pm
Jon, would love to talk about this, as Cleveland Historical is the first instance of “Mobile Historical,” just such a tool. We’re working on open-sourcing it and/or creating a very low cost hosted version. Download it and check it out (app.mobilehistorycleveland.org/). Also, I have been creating some Pensacola content, spent about 90 minutes creating several stories, which I will connect via a tour. I did this to demonstrate the broader concept that exists within the infrastructure of Cleveland Historical.
Will look very much to hearing and learning about all the experience you have in this area.