BPN 1384 My selection of WSA Best e-Content 09 (9)

Category: e-culture & Heritage

You Tour

PRODUCER’S DESCRIPTION
You Tour uses the latest generation iPods to offer a multimedia tour guide which lets tourists conveniently do their sightseeing at holiday destinations. In an educational, entertaining and interactive way, the user is guided around their chosen destination, their route enriched by a wealth of content. Not only are the tours well documented with location maps, digital reconstructions, photographs, illustrations, animations, videos and instructions; a regularly updated directory of museums, restaurants, shops and services keeps tourists up-to-date. A ‘survival kit’ offers information on embassies, currency, and emergency phone numbers. Finally, You Tour offers an audio/photo dictionary which contains useful phrases in the local language. Available in multiple languages, this comprehensive package can be downloaded free of charge from the iTunes store.

JUROR’S EVALUATION
This ingenious application offers a rich mixture of intriguing and practical content, combining historical explanations with current logistical information of interest to visitors of the Chiapas region. The You Tour navigation is intuitive, both compliant and sympathetic to the Apple interface standards for iPods. The product interacts excellently in a variety of user languages, taking advantage of location-based information. You Tour provides reliable local e-Content, at a time and place where the visitor is most likely to be interested and make use of it. You Tour is distributed by institutions or museums loaning the branded iPods to visitors at no charge. If this business model proves successful in Chiapas it will globally substituting local e-content for tour guides. As GPS becomes more ubiquitous in devices, further features may be added.

Producer
You Tour
Alejandro Machorro
Fernández
Rodolfo Laddaga López
Country
Mexico
Contact
info@youtour.travel
www.youtour.travel
Language
Spanish, Italian, French and English
Media Format
mobile content
Product URL
www.youtour.travel

Blog Posting Number: 1384

Tags: e-heritage

BPN 1564 U-TOUR Mexico stopped in its tracks

Today I received the following sad announcement of my Mexican friend Rudy Laddaga:

"With great sadness and frustration we announce that after 2 international awards, 3 national awards, half million dollars and 3 years invested in this project, U-TOUR will turn off the switch due to the lack of interest, commitment and vision of the Mexican Government.

When a great application with great content like U-TOUR is killed by the bureaucracy of a country, there's a red light showing that the content gap and digital divide is a bigger enemy to fight for. Hopefully U-TOUR will serve as an example of how institutions and government that are wrongly managed can help to make wider the digital divide.

We must say that has been a painful yet enlighten journey that although never saw the light, it gave birth to new projects, jobs, companies and opportunities.

Our hearts are restless and our minds blurred by a roller-coaster of contradictory feelings. We don't want to take any action at this point. That's why we call to your bright minds to think of any way that we could send a message to the Mexican Government from out broad and help my country to understand the damage that they're doing by killing initiatives like this."

For the big project mentioned see http://www.americanegypt.com/blog/?p=629

For more information on the WSA award for this project: http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/search?q=youtour

BPN 1564