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October 12, 2005
Digital Travel Tour With HP
This past weekend, some lucky Digital Storytelling Festival goers got to try out HP's new cool story-telling tool. Using GPS-enabled HP iPAQ Pocket PCs and location-based software platform developed by HP Labs, participants walked around parts of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood and got an unusual tour.
Instead of reading a guidebook or participating in a regular tour, participants listened to stories on their HP Pocket PCs. Among other things, they learned how artists transformed a canning plant into one of the nation's first live/work spaces, heard the sound of a creek that ran where a street now lies and the sound of trains that once carried corn oil to a mayonnaise factory that has since become a Starbucks.
"These stories aren't obvious from the streets," says Abbe Don, a researcher at HP Labs and executive producer of the project. "We call this 'narrative archeology,' because we're peeling back the layers of the neighborhood."
"The system knows where you are, and it plays the media based on the location," Don added.
Read the San Francisco Chronicle article here
Posted by insideoutmag at October 12, 2005 11:14 AM