Geogad Mobile Tours

Challenges Entered:

With the new Web 2.0 and mobile communication and electronic tools, a traveler can take their own multimedia tour guide with them. How this works: Travelers can search Google Maps for tours and tour stops across the world.Tags associated with the multimedia tour stops help travelers focus on the subjects that are of most interest to the them. Fellow travelers can rate the tour stops and can add their own tags to help identify them for other travelers.Local people can upload multimedia tour stops about the history of local areas. Geogad will give them a chance to reach out to travelers and explain why their homes are definitely worth a visit.Ways to get the tour:The tour itself can be streamed from the Geogad website.For the more mobile travel, the tour can be uploaded to a portable media player to be viewed at the traveler's leisure when at the location. For travelers with access to the Internet on their phones, the tour stop video clips and audio/photo slide shows can be streamed directly to their phones. For phones with GPS capability, the traveler could spontaneously search for tour stops that are close to their location and are of interest to them.

What else have you done in this area of work?

Geogad already has Web 1.0 version of these tours available from the <a href="http://www.geogad.com">Geogad website</a>. A few tours are available for free download.

Project Details

Project url:

http://www.geogad.com

Project video:

Supporting organization:

Geogad

Project Assessment

Financial support:

Project has financial support

Project goals:

Travel destroys prejudice and expands tolerance. Travelers are pushed outside of their comfort zones and exposed to different ways of living. Local people get economic opportunities and a stage by which they can continue to develop and share their unique culture with others. As the Internet provides more links directly between individuals, travelers can find more detailed information on places, but searching for this information is still time consuming. The latest Web 2.0 tools can help travelers find information down to the smallest street corner.Why this matters:As the world gets smaller, it seems everything is becoming the same. But if you dive a little deeper, every place is unique and has its own story to tell. Short of hiring a local guide, you might never find this out. Greater understanding of others and their view of the world is vital to achieving peace as the world becomes smaller. For example, in the first few days after Hurricane Katrina, people from outside the New Orleans area were suggesting that New Orleans not be rebuilt. To the residents of New Orleans, this is unthinkable. The people of New Orleans can use the tools that Geogad provides to help others see beyond the current damage and to virtually tour the city that they love and are rebuilding.Background:People love to travel and to learn about new places. As vacations get shorter and free time disappears, people don't have time to research the local histories of the places that they visit.Travelers have limited time and cannot always meet the scheduling constraints of organized tour group. These mass-marketed tours may waste a traveler's time with places that do not fit their interests.Local people have a wealth knowledge about their homes and favorite places but are not easy for travelers to find. What Geogad Mobile Tours will do:Create a tool for travelers and local people to share information on a very detailed level on a location-by-location basis.Let travelers share and rate information on individual tour stops that influenced them with others.Build a community to share the local histories of places with the people across the world.

Identified Obstacles:

TechnologyProgrammers â€“ preferably with experience in audio and video streaming especially over the mobile web.Audio/Video Engineers â€“ familiar with the latest editing tools and those that are coming for regular web users.Database programmers â€“ knowledgeable about optimizing databases for quick info retrieval preferably using open source databases.Server guru â€“ knowledgeable about Apache and how to scale web sites. Business/Administration:Business strategists - familiar with content sharing agreements and managing large amounts of data and users.Marketing/Advertising â€“ getting the news out about Geogad to both travelers and locals.Business analysts â€“ analyzing potential partnerships with travel sites and non-profits looking to get the word out about their work across the world.