Do you miss scrawling messages into the desks in your high school classes? Well, there will be an App for that and it will let you leave more than just letters.
PlaceThings is an iPhone/Android/Blackberry app that allows you to leave text, video, audio or photos at any location. Want to leave a comment about a place or a picture you took there? PlaceThings will let you do that too, with the goal of making physical locations rich with virtual content.
Any bits of media that get placed can be seen on an online-map. You could make video-logs of your travels for your friends and family to follow, or just leave anonymous comments at coffee shops.
PlaceThings is being created by students Nicholas Spencer, John SyrinekI, and Emerging Media and Communication Director Dean Terry. The app is still in development, but they are excited about it. The Placethings team were finalists in the Accelerator Competition at South by South West (SXSW) last year.
I asked Nick and John a little about how the application started.
John: “I wanted to do something new. Smartphone manufacturers like Apple just started shipping devices with GPS, and we realized this can provide a bridge from the virtual to the real world. Augmented reality was really fascinating to us.”
Nick: “(Terry and I) started conceptualizing what we could/wanted to do after (Terry’s) first mobile lab class. I initially wanted something for creating and sharing memories about locations. It sort of evolved from that into a story telling platform.”
If you’re intrigued, check out placethings.com/demo to take a look at what is going to be offered.
You are posting recent blog entries on twitter as well? If so I would like to know your account, so I can follow you there and be informed.
Hmmm thanks for this a little good post. But I still do not understand the second part though!
@evancho our twitter can be found at http://www.twitter.com/utdmercury – we post both links to blog and newspaper articles there!