Geolocated Media - I know where it's at!

I was recently at the HP Mediascape conference in Bristol, and wow, what a huge step geolocated media has taken these past few years. While it is still experimental, a bit clunky and semi-geeky (geek is cool ;) it is certainly a rapidly expanding medium. The conference featured case studies and presentations highlighting the immense potential for using this technology to enhance experiences of different environments and deliver content to an audience in a more dynamic and immersive way. From elements in alternative reality games to historical re-enactment tours around the Tower of London.

A Mediascape is a location-based experience, games and tours on a GPS handheld device. As you walk around a given area your GPS location triggers the playing of media in the application whether it be audio, images or video. As GPS devices become more widespread (how many people do you know with SatNav or a GPS mobile) this type of media becomes more justifiable for the big public service broadcasters to produce - they can reach more people. The British broadcasters already produce the best media in the world and this is yet another way in which our vast resources and archive can be re-packaged to reach a audience who might otherwise not receive this content -both at home and internationally.

HP have been developing this technology for a number of years and I remember Savannah which was created in associated with Futurelab and the BBC in Bristol. This was a strategy-based adventure game which allowed children to learn about life as a lion using their school playing field to mimic a Savannah, working together to hunt and survive. Read the Futurelab report here.

One I created earlier...NightlifeFor the nighttime challenge at the conference I, along with Mark Jacobs, Stuart Redding and Ed Drewitt, produced "Nighlife: World in a Square". We split Queens square, in Bristol, into four quarters, each representing a different continent. As you walk around the square you hear natural sounds from the nighttime of that continent - "can you guess where in the world you are?", walk a little further to see an image and hear a narration describing the natural sounds.

If Nightlife was an official geolocated experience connected to a public service production (channel4, BBC), we would need to include the capacity for the "immersee" to walk into any space, anywhere in the world, and unroll the experience around them, broadcasting not narrowcasting. And the Mscape software allows just that!

I found the Mscape creator software very intuitive and easy to work with, for the most part it is simply dragging and dropping onto a map. While you do need to understand the foundations of code to create more sophisticated experiences, anyone can get started with the basics. So download the toolkit and create a geolocated media guide around your garden. It may be a few years before the public service broadcasters can invest resources into producing such experiences for mass rollout but it is certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Paul Williams

Life in Cold Blood: David Attenborough face to face with a Spitting Cobra

Life in Cold Blood has now started posting some of the top clips from the series to YouTube and the first is when David comes face to face with a Mozambique spitting cobra.

Click on the image below to see the clip.

These clips will remain live until the final broadcast but they will be available on the bbc.co.uk Life in Cold Blood webpage indefinitely. Hopefully these clips will reach a few people who may never otherwise see this amazing series.

Life in Cold Blood will reveal the warm-hearted side to Amphibians and reptiles.

Earth: The Power of the Planet: Ice

Tuesday 4th December 21.00
2.6M viewers, 10.6% Audience Share
(Slot Average for Tues 21.00 = 2.16M viewers, 9% Audience Share)

Radio Times: I've worked out what worries me about Dr Iain Stewart, presenter of this stirring geography show. He's oddly reminiscent of The Thick of It's vicious spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker: the same Scottish accent and aquiline features. Except Stewart is far from vicious; he's unsettlingly nice, with a big toothy smile and a seemingly bottomless well of enthusiasm. And as it turns out, seemingly bottomless wells are a part of tonight's story, the wells hollowed out in glaciers by meltwater. No-one knows what happens at the far bottom of these rather beautiful holes, but whatever it is, the glaciers are melting at a rate of knots. To a geologist, that's nothing new. Ice has advanced and retreated across the Earth 50 times in its history, it seems, although in the great scheme of things it's unusual; for 90 per cent of Earth's history there was no ice around. When it was around, it shaped the landscape in huge ways, a story Stewart tells well.