Mapping and Tracing

At the 2006 Venice Biennial, the project Realtime Roma, developed by the MIT SENSEable City Lab, in association with TIM Italia, presents a system that monitors people, buses and taxis in the city of Rome, showing paths and communicational densities. It allows visualizing data that may help understand urban dynamics in real time. The project’s director Richard Burdett argues that “by revealing the pulse of the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment”.



Bio Mapping (2004) developed by Christian Nold is a community mapping project in which over the last four years with more than 1500 people have taken part in. In the context of regular, local workshops, participants are wired up with a device, which records the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR). This device is a simple indicator of the emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location.
People re-explore their local area by walking the neighbourhood with the device and on their return a map is created which visualizes points of high and low arousal. By interpreting and annotating this data, communal emotion maps are constructed that are packed full of personal observations which show the areas that people feel strongly about and truly visualize the social space of a community.

Tag a location: Mobotag and Flagr

Mobotag reveals the hidden layers of a city through an active exchange of location based media and text messages via the cellphone. It's collaborative phone tagging of the city. Part virtual graffiti, part walking tour, mobotag creates a spontaneous and easy way for tagging a neighborhood via the cellphone. Send and view messages, images, videos and sounds. See art, read stories, and watch a hidden layer of the city reveal itself. Respond with your media and participate in the creative expression and mapping of your neighborhood.
By sending a text message to mobotag, with your city location, you begin a interactive tour of a neighborhood. Using a unique geocoding feature, mobotag tells you what other messages exist in your local area.



Similiar to Mototag, in Flagr you are able to tag a location in a map.

GoCar

GoCar it's a tour guide…a talking car…a trusty co-pilot…and a local on wheels.
GoCar is the first-ever GPS-guided storytelling car - and it's available to rent right now!
Leave your guidebook behind and see the San Francisco, San Diego, Lisbon, Barcelona and Miami most visitors never see.



Your clever talking car navigates and shows you the way – but that's not all. As you enjoy the drive, it takes you to all the best sites and tells the stories that bring these cities to life.
These cars are smart. An on-board computer and a GPS-system do the thinking so you can actually relax and take in the beautiful cities. Best of all, the adventure happens at your pace. You can stop for photos, take detours, grab a coffee or break for lunch.

Walk Score

Walk Score help you find a walkable place to live by calculating a Walk Score for any address. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.

Walk Score website also has the most "walkable neighborhoods" area.

JotYou

JotYou™ is location based messaging. Send a message to your friends so they get it when they arrive at school or the ballpark or the mall. Make up geo-games. Track a foot race or bicycle race. Stage a road rally with virtual checkpoints, and feed the directions as participants progress. Ever plan to pick up the milk on the way home from work, but drive right by the store and forget? Use JotYou™ to remind yourself as you pass by specified locations.

How it works: You send a message to one person or many people, and specify a delivery time and location using the map on the computer, or an address from your mobile. When they arrive at the location you specify, JotYou™ alerts them by "buzzing" their cell phone, and delivering the message.

LoJo connect

LoJo is a project launched by a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies.


What is locative storytelling?
Using the bouquet of emerging mobile and location-based technologies (from GPS-enabled mobile phones to interactive online maps), locative storytelling provides multi-media content that enhances a user’s connection to a given place. At its best, this kind of interactive media gives users increased entry points, and more control over, any given story, thereby enabling deeper and more vibrant experiences.

What are some examples?
If you’ve ever been on an audio tour of a museum or a city neighborhood, you’ve experienced locative storytelling. Other examples include Google mash-ups (user-enhanced Google maps that layer location-specific information over area maps) and GPS-based mobile games.