Experience London with a personalised tour guide in your pocket. Or tell your own story about your favourite places. Who better to guide you than a local?
Voicemap is a mobile application that tells site-specific audio stories. And get this, you can choose who you want to listen to. Tour guides, poets, comedians, locals and everyday travellers share their stories for your perambulating pleasure.
Your audio track of choice is triggered by your GPS coordinates, so it knows just when to tell you to look down the alleyway on your right, or stop in your tracks and look up.
Audio walks are available mainly in Cape Town (where the business is based) but have extended to Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Tunis, Singapore, Bangkok, Washington DC, New York, Beijing and now London.
The app is currently available for iPhone and Android is in development.
There are currently seven walks in London, including the likes of Westminster (walking from the Golden Jubilee Bridge through to Whitehall Gardens), Wapping (major landmarks include the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Wapping Pierhead and Prospect of Whitby Inn),Waterloo (a quick tour from Waterloo Station to The Beer House), Southwark (following the footsteps of Chaucer and Shakespeare across London Bridge to Southbank), and for something a little different and typically Brit eccentric, a History, Health and Hygiene tour of London’s loos in Bloomsbury.
Perhaps the best thing about the application, though, is the ease with which anyone can become a storyteller (and get half of the sales revenue on their stories). The app comes with a publishing tool, which allows users to combine text, audio and GPS coordinates for their own personal route. Users can then share their stories for whichever fee they choose.
As Aussies living in the UK, this is a great way to discover London as well as for you to share your unique experiences of your favourite spots – and maybe even profit from doing so.
IMAGES: flickr.com/Simon&HisCamera – voicemap.me – Shutterstock.com
