Today from Twitter: trying again

Searching "audio tour" on Twitter today reveals these gems:

• A couple of commercial audio tour producers are advertising their product on Twitter today. One company, UK-based HeartBeat Guides, sells mp3 audio guides of popular tourist cities all over the world. Their product is clearly aimed at tourists and a typical download appears to be around $10. From the site: "HeartBeatguides are a magical mix of atmosphere and vital information for the visitor." The samples offered do appear to have excellent audio production (which, strangely, seems to be a rare in commercial audio tours), full of ambient sound. But I can't tell how well the mp3s actually guide visitors through the city. It appears to present guide-book style general information in audio form without embracing a particular place. So maybe it's better for pre-travel listening or listening to on a bus or in the hotel before a day of adventure. But it's very hard to tell these things from a sample. (via iPod_Travel)
• The other self-tweeting company is called Visual Travel Tours. It also sells tours of spots around the globe, but they are much more multi-media. Customers can download printable text and photos, or audio/video guides to run on your iPhone -- then there's the happy medium which includes text and video, but no audio. The samples indicate the audio production here is more rudimentary with a single narrator reading a script. But the information presented seems to be more directly tied to place, and I think this has to do with the writer. VTT gets experts on a given place to write the scripts, so there is a more personal touch. I want to talk more with the creators about this very interesting placecasting model. (via VTravelTours)
• For the second time in a row, my Twitter search has brought up a mention of Civil War audio tours. In both cases, the tours referenced were by CivilWarTraveler.com, I'm a Civil War buff myself, and I would have LOVED to have placecasts of the battlefields I visited back in high school. These are very good and I'll write more about them tomorrow.
• People have been taking audio tours of Prestongrange since 2004. What is Prestongrange? "Prestongrange is a site of major importance in the story of Scotland's Industrial Revolution." The tour includes stops at a brickworks, a kiln and a cornish beam engine. What is a cornish beam engine? Look it up. The audio tour seems pretty important to the site, given how promanently it's featured on the Prestongrange Web site. The narrator is John Bellany, "one of Scotland's most noted living artists, who was born in nearby Port Seton." So next time we're in Scottland, let's use the digital revolution to help us better understand the industrial one. (via deb_max)
• Finally, it looks like today, 9/10, is the day for audio touring in Istanbul. A creative group called C-U-M-A (which also appears to organize flash mobs, among other pursuits) is handing out MP3 players so people can tour the city at certain times today. The audio tour doesn't seem to be available for download, but it sounds interesting. It "intends to frame Istanbul not just from an artist's point of view but through the insights and voices of designers, urban planners and artisans. Wish I could be there. (via evrenuzervb)

And that's it for today's Twitter hits. I'll try again in a few days. Happy touring. And I'm always looking for more tour recommendations.

Web project needs our help: take photos of your local Main Street!

(If I'm writing about placecasting, maybe this is placeumentary?)

Main Street is NOT the most popular street name in the U.S. (#1 is actually Second Street...go figure), but is IS right up there on the list. And how many times have we heard politicians and pundits refer to "Main Street America" and "Main Street Values"?

The creators of Mapping Main Street heard that, too, and they wanted to find out just what Main Street America looks like and sounds like.  Turns out there are over 10,000 answers to that questions...and these folks are going to visit each one.  At least, they'll visit them with our help.  MMS is asking for your stories, photos or videos about a Main Street near you.  Not sure if your town has one? There's a search box on the  Mapping Main Street Web site that will find the Main Streets nearest you.


What a great idea! I'm excited to see such a down-to-earth emphasis on flyover country. I hope this project gets attention from users and the media (maybe politicians, too??).

Now I wonder why the project isn't asking for audio submissions as well.  They have a good way of uploading photos and videos.  So why not audio?  We know they respect audio as a medium...the creators are radio producers AND there's a great companion series of radio stories that launched yesterday on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.  The story is about Main Street in Chattanooga, TN, which -- at least in parts -- is a popular place to pick up drugs and prostitutes.  The story talks with the people who live and "work" on Main Street and trust me, these aren't the folks politicians are probably talking about.

I may go hunting for stories along the Main Street in Minneapolis, which is tucked away along the riverfront across from downtown...it is NOT a major street.

What I'm reading next

The amount of information out there is both exciting and overwhelming.  Here are some sites I'm going to start exploring now:

• Locative-Media.org
  
• Medill School's LoJo project  (LoJo = Locative Journalism)
  
• New York Times "Weekend Explorer" walking tours (downloadable .mp3 files focused on neighborhoods or themes in NYC)
  
• MapsAlive (an alternative to ubiquitous Google Maps)

My favorite thing

This is where we're headed.  

I LOVE that I can read New York Times stories based on their location using Google Earth.  The new map layer was big news when it launched a year ago.  Coverage in  Wired, CNET, and of course Google's own maps blog, LatLong. (The links from the LatLong blog post will take a while to explore, but look extremely relevant to this project.)

Google Earth layers aren't available yet (as far as I can tell) in the iPhone/iPod Touch Maps app, but when they are, this will allow someone standing anywhere in the world to read the latest news (from this one major news source) about the places nearest them.  Looking at my neck of the world in GoogleEarth a few weeks ago, for example, I was surprised to see not one but three stories about Duluth, Minnesota in the Times.  Since I don't comb the NYT Web site every day, I had missed these stories.

And I think this is the key to placecasting...it starts with the map.  My mobile device finds where I am (or I tell it where I'm going) and it's map function shows me the information available about that place.  

Now, what if the information wasn't a news story I have to read, but a radio story, audio tour or personal history relevant to the landscape around me?  My eyes can be in the present while my ears are receiving the context to help me understand what I'm seeing. 

News sites that use maps

More and more news Web sites are using maps in their on-line reporting.  This can work in at least two ways:

Maps specific to a story -- where the scope of the story encompasses many places and it's useful to represent those places, and information about them, on a map.  Here's an example from my own news organization:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2009/04/03_school_districts/

What interests this project more is sites that place stories on a map -- when the story is about a specific geographic place, that location is included in the story's online metadata.  

This allows Web sites to show the scope of their reporting on a map and allows users to select content based on location.  It can also reveal interesting and surprising trends in a given news organization's coverage bias.  Here's a Web only news site that claims to be representing Chicago's neighborhoods better than the city's two main newspapers:

http://www.chicagotalks.org/

I'm going to try to learn more about outside.in, the map provider Chicago Talks uses.