LOJOCONNECT.COM
location-based technology + journalism

By Hilary Powell

Locative technologies are becoming more important to the future of journalism. Based on extensive research and experimentation with “locative journalism,” our team of master’s students at the Medill School of Journalism has completed a downloadable report (45 pages, plus appendices, in a single 3MB PDF file). From the report, here are our recommendations for journalists, news organizations and media companies:

1) Think geographically
News organizations should geotag their content. As location-based services and applications grow, the companies that have tagged their content from the beginning will have an advantage.

2) Capitalize on mobile technology for geo-content
The mobile technology already exists for news organizations to use location-based services to target consumers on mobile devices. One example is mobile phone messaging based on a recipient’s location. JotYou provides text messages that are only delivered when a recipient enters a previously specified geographic location. As an example, people could opt-in to get the latest score of a Cubs game as they drive by Wrigley Field. The technology exists for news organizations to start sending text messages of breaking news headlines that are geographically relevant.

3) The media should be experimenting now with mobile content
Now is the right time to explore and capitalize on the mobile content world. Smartphones are expected to continue to gain popularity, which would give media companies more opportunities to provide wireless content on portable devices. As people become “urban nomads” who aren’t tied to home or the office, there is a push for mobile content and Internet experiences on portable devices that are more similar to that of the desktop computers in terms of look and usability, such as the number of clicks required to access information. Google’s new Android open mobile operating system could help make this transition more seamless. Web pages are increasingly being optimized for the mobile devices through sites such as Skweezer.

4) Streamline content delivery
The process of getting content to portable devices is often cumbersome. The news media should capitalize on new technologies to streamline content delivery and thereby increase the number of users. Improvements in wireless, cellular and GPS technologies will allow for on-demand, wireless content delivery.

5) Target a young adult audience
Young adults are likely to be most receptive to location-based media at this point. Mobile social networking sites that are driven by location, such as Brightkite and Loopt, have immersed young adults into the world of location-based services. Young adults are also the most likely to have the smartphones that are best right now for location-based storytelling. But the audience will broaden as all mobile phones become more location-aware.

6) Maximize existing resources
News organizations should utilize their mobile journalists for locative storytelling. They can easily re-purpose audio, video and images from other kinds of stories. Also, news organizations should remember that locative storytelling does not have to require GPS-triggered stories. They can utilize audio recorders, which they most likely already have, for audio-only stories. Making audio tracks of locative stories available for download on the Web is cost-effective and easy.

7) Harness the power of audio
News organizations should begin to explore locative storytelling through audio tours. Not only are audio tours less costly to produce than GPS-driven content, but the audience is more likely to already have the MP3 players or even desktop computers needed to hear the stories. Start with audio tours and then eventually work up to location-triggered stories such as Mediascapes. News organizations should remember that walking tours often work best when they are mostly audio-based. Video is still very powerful, but should be reserved for the Web for location-based storytelling.

8 ) Treat locative stories differently, depending on the type of news
Breaking news is different from in-depth features and should be treated as such. It is ideal to know breaking news as it happens, so news organizations should capitalize on wireless alerts. However, immersive storytelling such as Mediascapes should be on-demand. Users may not have the time or patience for these types of stories on a daily basis, but this option should be readily available. Also, immersive storytelling that is dependent upon a user’s physical location should be tied closely to the geographic surroundings. News organizations may want to create GPS-driven stories on-site, so they can also provide precise orientation and directional cues, which are crucial.

9) Avoid “Google Maps fatigue”
News organizations need to better organize and differentiate information on interactive maps, to help avoid having content that looks repetitive. With Google Maps, there is not a lot you can do to change the look of the interface or to add more interactive features. However, Google Maps API gives authors some of these capabilities. News organizations should also explore other types of interactive maps.

10) Explore location-based advertising
Location-based advertising is one hope for media companies to generate revenue from location-based stories. It has great allure because consumers could conceivably be in locations near advertisers’ stores or products, and buy based upon impulse or convenience. Advertisements could play immediately before or after locative stories. However, news organizations should avoid ads embedded within locative stories, which would not only be intrusive, but also heavily blur the line between editorial and advertising content.

11) Encourage user feedback and community involvement
In offering locative content, news organizations should capitalize on the trendiness of sites that allow sharing, commenting and user-generated content. Also, following the lead of community storytelling initiatives, such as The Organic City, based in Oakland, Calif., newsrooms should engage community members in story development and promotion.

12) Just do it!!!
Locative journalism is relatively new, but holds a great deal of promise. We’re accustomed to using linear interfaces, such as alphabetized directories and timelines, to organize and access information. But our experiences in the real, physical and non-digitized world are usually not linear. They’re spatial, dynamic and intuitive. Locative technology has the power to capitalize on that instinct.

By Amy Lee

Fellow LoJo Team member Satta Sarmah on Saturday blogged about our recent trial of our Chicago Olympic 2016 Mediascape tour in Washington Park, and noted that while it wasn’t without a hitch (who knew balloons marking a path would prove confusing?), overall we judge the event as a success because of the largely positive feedback on both our reporting and on the use of GPS technology for storytelling. Our participants were kind enough to fill out a fairly lengthy and in-depth questionnaire we’d developed to gauge what worked, what didn’t and offer suggestions on how this technology might be applied to other subject matter to create a thorough and engaging storytelling experience.

One idea for other story ideas that could work with GPS-based devices that repeatedly surfaced from our “guinea pigs” this past Saturday was the idea that this technology could be used to create neighborhood historical tours, especially in a town like Chicago, which is known for its diverse and long-established neighborhoods. This struck me as pretty genius, so I decided to sit down and see what’s out there for Chicago residents looking for a mobile storytelling experience, even if it isn’t based on GPS technology (since there’s very little of that out there right now).

Turns out, the Chicago History Museum is a gold mine for location-based tours – and I don’t mean just audio tours of indoor museum exhibits.
I mean location-based storytelling by land, by elevated train and by boat, including self-propelled (kayak) and tours on the sightseeing boats on the Chicago River. They offer a variety of tours, some with an audio companion and some with real-life guides. They go into gritty neighborhoods and upper-crust neighborhoods. They go to pubs. They have not one but five elevated train tours in a series they call “Life Along the ‘L’.” They have a series of cemetery tours and a 25-mile bike tour – in fact, unfortunately, all three of their summer bike tours are already booked solid.

So, for those looking to delve deeper into Chicago’s history and get out and experience location-based storytelling this summer, check out their website – and if the bike tours are any indication, do it quickly, before the tour you’re looking for is sold out!

By Satta Sarmah

With a bit of anxiety and great anticipation, the LoJo team ventured to Washington Park this morning for a trial run of our Chicago 2016 locative tour.

We were armed with our HP IPAQ GPS-enabled devices, headphones, response surveys–and loads of coffee and bagels— for the people who were kind enough to volunteer as our multimedia guinea pigs.

About 10 people showed up for our experiment, which was the perfect number for our five-person team.

Though we had more GPS devices than people, even the best laid plans sometimes go awry.

A few of our devices went haywire. Some couldn’t locate a GPS signal and others didn’t trigger in the right spots.

Besides the technical errors, there were also human ones. We decided to put markers along the route of our locative tour, but some people got lost or continued walking along the path when they were supposed to stop at a particular point to hear the story.

Some of these mishaps were probably because our directions weren’t as spot-on as we thought.

At the end of the tour, we asked participants to fill out surveys. The feedback was a mix of positive and constructive criticism:

- Because of the glare from the sun, many of the pictures we loaded were difficult for our tour-goers to see. Some even said the pictures were a bit of a distraction and that they would have liked fewer of them, so that they could be more engaged with the physical location.

-Many people enjoyed the historical aspects of the tour. The beginning of the tour included historical photos and information about the World’s Fair held near Washington Park in 1893. We also had Chicago historian and lifelong South Side resident, Timuel Black, talk about what the park was like in the early 1900’s. Hearing and seeing historical information and pictures of Washington Park while touring the modern version of the location really seemed to work.

- Though some said there should have been less narration from LoJo team members, another tour-goer complimented our narration by saying it reminded him of something that would have been written by NPR personality Ira Glass, a compliment that our team will graciously accept.

- Some said more user-control would have been great. However, the nature of GPS-based storytelling is that the content is triggered by the location, which has its pluses and minuses. A good alternative for this would be a podcast, which users could download to their mp3 players.

- Many tour-goers also said locative storytelling could be adopted by news organizations, with a little bit of tweaking of the platform and the storytelling itself. Suggestions included more directions to orient users to the location and an improved interface in regards to the GPS technology.

-As for what stories are best told in this format, people said stories about real estate and gentrification worked best. Downloadable neighborhood tours posted on a newspaper’s Web site are the best way for news organizations to monetize and make use of locative storytelling, tour-goers said.

All in all, we think our locative tour was a success. Though it was, literally, a walk in the park, the LoJo team is a bit exhausted. We’ll be using the rest of our Saturday to engage in an activity that’s a little more lax than a walk in the park— a nap in our beds.

By Ki Mae Heussner

So, tomorrow’s the big day.

After reporting, researching, recording, foraging the Chicago History Museum for antique photographs of Washington Park and building our Mediascapes, we’re ready to test our Olympics audio tour with actual people.

Tomorrow morning, in Washington Park (the site of the proposed Olympic stadium), we’re holding a public event to demonstrate the potential of locative storytelling. All those who attend will take a GPS-guided tour of the park to learn about the possible community impacts of hosting the 2016 Olympics in Chicago.

This past week, we split our time between Washington Park and our computer screens. If we weren’t walking around, iPAQs in hand, trying to catch a GPS signal, we were in front of our laptops, editing audio tracks, optimizing photographs and peering at Google Maps of Chicago’s South Side.

We’re grateful for the brave few who have agreed to serve as our guinea pigs tomorrow (it’s not too late to sign up…) and we think the trial should go smoothly.

Still, given all that we’ve learned during the past few weeks about locative storytelling and our trusty GPS devices, we do have a few concerns:

- The reliability of our handy dandy iPAQs. When they work, they’re fantastic - beyond geographically orienting users, they do have the great potential to uniquely connect users to the history and the people of a given place. But they don’t always work properly. They’re often temperamental. Sometimes they’re painfully slow to load. When we take a whole fleet of them out for testing, for unknown reasons a stubborn few will refuse to cooperate.

- The quality of our audio tracks. After much editing of scripts and audio recordings, I think we have some fine examples of audio-based journalism for our test subjects tomorrow. But the non-broadcast majors among us had to learn a new kind of writing and thinking to master this kind of multimedia journalism. We also added in ambient noise, appropriate music and other (free) sounds to further engage our listeners.

- The precision of our GPS trigger zones. The Hewlett-Packard Mscape maker is very user-friendly and powerful. It’s been a crucial tool for our class, as we learn about the limits and opportunities in locative storytelling. But the maps that the program imports for users are not very granular. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to place our GPS trigger zones so that as people walk around the park they hear the narration relevant to their locations. But, future iterations of Mscape maker (and other similar programs), should make it easier for creators of GPS-guided tours to determine the boundaries of their trigger zones.

By Ki Mae Heussner

It should have been just a walk in the park. But since we were testing our newly-hatched Mediascape, it wasn’t yet the smooth experience we were hoping for.

After building our Chicago 2016 Mediascape (or GPS-triggered multimedia tour), we drove to the sites of a few proposed Olympic venues to test our project.

As with our first test run, we created a bit of spectacle. (If there’s a way to track down a GPS signal while still looking dignified, we haven’t yet mastered it.) But, after some maneuvering, we succeeded in getting our GPS events to trigger at each of our designated locations.

Using a Hewlett-Packard iPAQ, our final project will allow users to travel to Washington Park, Douglas Park and Northerly Island to learn about the Olympic venues planned for each site as well as the impacts of those venues on the surrounding communities. In testing our tour this week, we learned how we need to refine and adjust our tour to maximize the user experience.

A few of the technical issues include:

- Losing the GPS signal. We knew tall buildings could block the signal; now we know tall trees can have the same effect.
- Making sure the photos are optimized for the device. If a file is too large, the device can’t display it. (This problem is easily solved.)
- Keeping the devices fully charged. If the battery power is too low, the device can’t search for a GPS signal. (This is also an easily-solved issue.)
- Correctly defining the limits of the GPS trigger zone. Using Hewlett-Packard’s Mscape maker, we imported maps of Washington Park, Douglas Park and Northerly Island, and then highlighted the parts of the map that corresponded to the places we wanted users to experience the media events. We learned, however, that it’s difficult to trigger events at very specific places (like schools or fountains) that don’t appear explicitly on Mscape maker maps. We were able to get around this hurdle by anchoring media events to nearby intersections or prominent landmarks.

In addition to these technical obstacles, we also encountered a few ease-of-use issues. For example:

- Five-minute audio tracks seem reasonable when you’re sitting inside a warm classroom, but when you’re standing in an open field in 40-degree weather, five minutes feels like 15 minutes. We learned that we need to shrink each media event and/or direct users to more comfortable locations, such as stadium seats. (Chicago weather, unfortunately, we can’t control.)
- Driving tours require substantial and specific driving directions. Washington Park, for example, contains a fairly simple web of roadways. But when other cars are factored in, the park could prove hazardous for a driver trying to listen to a Mediascape. We always assumed that a driving tour would not be a solo experience, but we now know that each audio track needs to provide drivers with very clear navigational cues.

By Satta Sarmah

The Lojo Team has been working hard to create a locative experience centered around Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.

We’re attempting to venture into a realm that many media outlets have yet to explore—or so we thought.

As I was surfing the Internet looking for topics to blog about, I came across an interesting feature on the New York Times’ Web site.

In its travel section, the Times has a feature called “Rome at Night.” The feature is accompanied by the usual multimedia suspects–a map and a slideshow.

But what makes the Times’ feature so distinctive is the inclusion of a “Walking Tour of Rome at Night” that users can download to their Ipod.

The tour is narrated by Ian Fisher, chief of the newspaper’s Rome bureau. Fisher also wrote the accompanying article.

Since I’m not in Rome, I obviously can’t experience the tour first hand. Luckily, the NY Times had the foresight to allow the audience to experience the tour online.

The Web site has a map of Rome with more than 10 locations that people can visit on the walking tour. Each location on the online map has two buttons–one for sound and one for audio. People can click on either button to see a photo or hear information about the location.

After seeing the Times’ walking tour, I decided to do a Google search to see if any other publications had done something similar.

It turns out that from 2005-2006, Slate Magazine had a series of audio tours that users could download from its website.

Slate’s first tour was for the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Slate called it an unauthorized tour with “commentary museums don’t want you to hear.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour is that Slate’s art critic, Lee Seigel, tells you which paintings are the most overrated and underrated at the museum–a perspective that only a journalism critic could offer.

In previous discussions about locative storytelling, we said it was a great way for newspapers to tell innovative stories that discuss the history of place or report on a once-in-a-lifetime event like the Olympics.

The Times and Slate tours show that this kind of storytelling is great for travel sections as well. However, the challenge will be for news outlets to offer something to travelers that they can’t get from a tour created by a tourism bureau or travel business.

I’m sensing more unauthorized tours are in the works…

By Hilary Powell

How would you like your phone to buzz about a sale at that store you just passed?

For creating an innovative application with Google Inc.’s upcoming free and open mobile operating system, Android, four MIT students recently won a prize in the Google-sponsored Android Developer Challenge to create software that tests the power of open phone systems.

Yahoo! news featured an article Monday about a class project 20 students were given to design a software program for cell phones that uses Google Inc.’s upcoming Android mobile operating system. According to the article, the students tested ways to make cell phones act differently according to location. In a way, they tried to endow cell phones with a kind of conscience:

“One project named GeoLife gives users a way to set to-do lists and get reminders on their phones. Walk by the market, and the device might buzz with a message that you’re supposed to pick up milk. Then there was Locale, which lets users configure their phones to automatically adjust their settings when the devices detect themselves in certain zones. So you might set your phone to automatically go into vibrate mode in the office and silent mode at the movie theater, and ring everywhere else.”

Other applications that made it into the top 50 include a program that discovers pricing and other data for any product with a barcode by scanning the code with a cell phone camera, a tool that allows users to navigate and record a route using images instead of maps and a niche innovation that gives golfers real-time, location-specific information, such as the weather and game statistics.

By Ki Mae Heussner

Road trips just got a whole lot more interesting.

Forget books on tape, talk radio and even in-car DVDs. Earlier this month, a team of sketch comedy writers and actors launched what they’ve dubbed the “world’s first satcom” or GPS-assisted comedy.

Called “230 Miles of Love,” the program is a series of comedy sketches that can be downloaded for free to a GPS-enabled mobile phone or other device. As you cruise the M6 motorway - the longest motorway in the UK - the sketches automatically start to play as you reach relevant points.

For example, as you start to grumble to yourself about the expense of an upcoming toll plaza, a short sketch about the pricey nuisance might start to play.

So far, reports and reviews of the satcom say it’s very humorous and no more distracting than a radio show. The program’s producers - Moving Audio - intend for “230 Miles of Love” to be the first episode in a six-part series of locative media comedies about transport and geography.

They’ve also taken a very open, transparent approach to the project. On their Web site, they clearly explain how they made the GPS tour (they recorded the whole thing in one day and edited it in two) and invite others to experiment with the tools themselves.

The Moving Audio team used Kansas-based Geovative Solutions’ GeoTours Premium to create the satcom but emphasize that the company also offers free applications.

By Joyce Chang

Our project was initially discussed as a way to depict a future event – to show what Chicago would look like if it wins the 2016 Olympic bid – but we’ve also realized that locative storytelling can be a rich tool for envisioning the past.

On May 1, Berlin launched a GPS-based multimedia tour to virtually re-create the Berlin Wall, since very little remains of its physical structure, according to German news site, Spiegel Online. The Mauerguide, a portable device equipped with GPS technology, traces the Wall’s path, offering video and audio eyewitness accounts of the Wall’s creation in 1961 to stop an exodus of people from Soviet-held communist East Berlin.

The Mauerguide tells the story of Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old bricklayer who was shot in the stomach and back by East German border guards as he climbed the Wall in August 1962. He fell back onto the eastern side and was left to bleed to death in no-man’s land as he cried for help.

That is just one of many stories included in the tour. For people who can’t make it to the Berlin Wall site, there are sample tours online. It seems that mostly tourism groups and museums have utilized these types of historical, audio-visual tours up to this point. One reason the media may shy away from using historical locative storytelling is that newspapers generally emphasize current, breaking news, and do not necessarily go into such background depth. But the ability of locative storytelling to provide context for these locations or events makes it a really powerful tool to give a better understanding of history and its lasting effect.

We recently visited the Chicago History Museum to get historical pictures of planned Olympic venue sites. We realized that many of the sites have a rich history, including Washington Park’s role in the World’s Fair in 1893. We also plan to meet with a cultural historian. We will weave these historical pictures and stories into our final project, along with images of the current sites and schematic drawings of what to expect in the future.

By Hilary Powell

Although Team LoJo is considering how to incorporate Chicago’s mass train system into our locative story project, there are few examples online of train-based tours. So I got to typing to track down some online sites dedicated to seeing city sights. And Chicago’s certainly on the right track.

The Loop Tour Train is a popular way to see historic landmarks downtown during spring and summer months.The Chicago Office of Tourism sponsors the free tour May 5th through September 29th. The free tour is approximately 40 minutes long and leaves every Saturday at 10:00 a.m. and 10:40 a.m. from the Randolph and Wabash CTA station. But sometimes tours can also be a way to present an unearthed side of a city.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has encouraged rail riders to get out and see the city’s art with the Art’s a Trip Free Metro Rail Tour.  A docent-led tour travels along the Metro’s Red and Gold lines, riding the train to different stations. Free tours are offered the first Saturday and Sunday of each month. The artwork first adorned the walls in 1989, when the Metro’s art department commissioned more than 250 local artists to get creative.

An online review by the author of the photo’s above suggests it’s a great way to learn about the city’s transportation structure in general. So when considering the character of a city, transportation can be very much a part of the local personality — and that personality could be cheap and used by all!