The MIT Museum is leading an innovative location-based storytelling research project, Museum Without Walls (MWOW), to put history and science in your hand and turn the world into a museum. The goal is to help reveal the hidden and the extraordinary in the MIT landscape by encouraging people to learn about their surroundings. It begins with an Institute-based effort but the project is pioneering the development of technologies as a model usable by any institution or community.

Both groups had the classic problem of notification -- getting a user to tune in requires interrupting their current activity, not something users have been known to relish. Billions were spent on Web School applications that assumed users would bookmark for a return visit, or would happily accept email alerts, but despite a few well-publicized successes like Schwab.com and eBay, users have mostly refused to "check back often."

We constantly rely on the cognitive capabilities of individuals in software design -- we assume a user can associate the mouse with the cursor, or that icons will be informative. We rarely rely on the cognitive capabilities of groups, however, though we rely on those capabilities in the real world all the time.

The suggestion about general web accessibility for the CoDeck interface came in the form of a rhetorical question -- "Why not make it as broadly accessible as possible?" In the Web School, of course, the answer is "No reason", since more users are always A Good Thing, but for CoDeck there were several good reasons for not simply turning their project into a Web video app. First, the physicalization of the interface, using the gutted BetaMax deck, provides a communal affordance that it is impossible to replicate over the web. Second, since CoDeck serves a tight community, the density of communication among ITP video makers would be diluted by general accessibility. Third, having the video deck in the lounge makes it self-policing; the cohesion of the community keeps it largely free from abuse, whereas a generally accessible and password-free "upload and critique" video site would become a cesspool of porn within hours. Finally, serving a local community maximizes use of free bandwidth on the local network, enabling features that would saddle a public system with crippling costs.

Estas audioguías GPS serán accesibles para los turistas extranjeros --puesto que van a ser diseñadas en varios idiomas-- y tendrán un importante componente de audio y video para que los discapacitados sensoriales tengan acceso a toda la información relevante, informó la Universidad en nota de prensa.

Se prevé que las audioguías se puedan alquilar en los diferentes puntos de información --oficinas de turismo locales--,

Would I need an ordinary guide as well? Honestly, no. But I would like to have all my travel information available in the form of an audio download and accessible on my car DVD-player or my Mp3 rather than accessible in a written form. This would enable me to listen to the introductory stuff, while travelling on the underground, in my car or relaxing at my hotel. After surfing around on the Internet, it seems as if this option is not fully available. The large publishers are naturally scared of being hit by the same blitz as the music business. The prediction is however pretty easy. It is only a matter of time.

But some say the flood of information becoming available through mobile phones and other means is not always such a good thing. "I worry that people attribute too deep a meaning to raw information," said Danah Boyd, who researches social media at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "An increased flow of information should not be confused with a deeper bond." Boyd stressed that this also applied to other social media that gather large amounts of personal information, like blogs or digital photo accounts. "The situation these technologies create is similar to what happens with Angelina Jolie or another celebrity," Boyd said. "Just because I know a lot about a person does not mean they will help me on a tough day." An added risk for the location-announcing services is that people might find themselves unable to break away from following friends or old lovers, Boyd added. "The problem is that people really, really love stalking," Boyd said. "When you have just ended a relationship, it is not necessarily healthy to follow the exact location of your ex- lover minute-by-minute on your phone."

Geomática, en algunos lugares del mundo denominada Geoinformática, es un término científico moderno que resulta de la unión de Ciencias de la Tierra y la Informática para expresar una integración sistémica de técnicas y metodologías de adquisición, almacenamiento, procesamiento, análisis, presentación y distribución de información geográficamente referenciada.

Geomatics is the discipline of gathering, storing, processing, and delivering of geographic information, or spatially referenced information.