Research & development for the social web
Another idea: ‘What Happened Here?’
Ewan McIntosh over on the 4iP blog has picked up on our new policy of setting ideas free (starting with Bands From Here), in a blog post debating the transparency and opaqueness of the 4iP pitching process. There’s even talk of a ‘turned down by 4iP’ wiki.
I thought I’d continue our spirit of openness by releasing another idea. This one is all about using blue plaques as a starting point for discovering the heritage of cities (and, I guess, towns and villages), via the platform of mobile phones. The idea was first floated on Twitter, and then written up on my personal blog, so it’s already ‘out there’, but I thought it might be interesting to publish the actual text of the 4iP submission.
The idea has gone through a few working titles, but my current favorite is ‘What Happened Here?‘ (playing off the ‘x lived/worked/studied here’ phrasings of blue plaques.
Elevator Pitch
See a blue plaque, look it up on your mobile, find out more…
Needs and Benefits
Curiosity. Curing boredom. Filling dead time. If you spot a blue plaque (or a red one, or any colour), and you don’t recognise the name of the apparently important historical person mentioned, you’re likely to wonder who they are, what they did, and why they and their home have been commemorated.
The audience is anyone who shares this curiosity. Or anyone who, like Matt Jones, is a bionic noticier.
Approach
Because plaques tend to be spotted outside, whilst laptops and computers tend to get used inside, the mobile is the ideal platform on which to fulfil this desire for information.
We’ll adopt a strategy of aiming to use the mobile-optimised web as far as possible, using platform-specific applications (eg for the iPhone or S60 devices) only where the added benefits makes this worthwhile. We’ll keep the method of matching users to the plaques they’ve just walked past as simple as possible, using GPS/CellID where available, but also simple text-based suggested search and browsable maps.
We’ll use and link to as much existing relevant content as possible (eg Wikipedia biographies), as well as adding to this content and encouraging user-contributed corrections, comments and annotations.
All our data and content will open via APIs, downloadable KML files (for Google Earth), and so on.
Competition
Intriguingly, I’m rapidly discovering, there have been lots of attempts to build services around blue plaque data before. Most unfortunately have fallen by the wayside, and are no longer online. Happily, I’ve been able to connect with the people behind many of these projects, and collect their data and content (with permission) to re-use. I’m even hopeful that I’ll be able to re-use some audio content about blue plaques, recorded several years ago by Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley!
See my blog post for further details on the previous projects and my ongoing efforts to collate blue plaque data.
The idea is currently ‘under review’, which is the default state for newly-submitted ideas. We’ll let you know what happens with it.
As before, your comments, feedback and constructive criticism is most welcome.
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