Stay Curious My Friends

Last week I ran around the Saratoga National Battlefield Park and it was amazing! I’m a history nut so I’m pretty easy to please but this park was particularly well done. The signs explaining what went on were well done, some included maps, some had voice overviews, and they even had a few rangers to answer questions at some of the locations along the route. Still, I wanted more information and I think a lot more people would be interested and visit the parks if more information was provided. I’d love to see an iPhone/iPad app for the national park service that provided history information via text, voice, pictures, and video of all the parks in the USA. Not only for historical locations, but also natural locations.

Just imagine how amazing it would be at the Saratoga park to whip out your iPhone or iPad on stop #4 and listen/read to as much information about the battle in that spot. Or to see a timeline of the battle, and maps, and animated movements of the forces at this important battle. Or at stop #10 to learn about the family that lived in that farm, what happened before the battle and after. The ranger could answer a lot of my questions but this could be even better.

And this could also work at natural parks, information on hikes, maps, information on trees/animals/birds etc. Even social features like a listing of people looking for someone to run a trail with on x date etc.

I’d love for the iPhone/iPad to one day be able to use their camera to view a location and draw fortification lines and structures virtually. How awesome would it be to hold up your iPhone along a ridge, and virtual fortifications and trenches show up to show where the Americans or British dug in to fight. Or if this could be done in Europe being able to hold up to Hardian’s Wall locations and see what the wall was thought to look like, or even soldiers moving around. I can’t wait for augmented reality!

Ok so probably not my best idea. But I was talking to someone here in DC and had the idea of doing facetime tours with the iPad or iPhone of historical tours in Rome and other places. So older people stuck somewhere could have a live tour as if they were there. Kinda nerdy and you have a time zone issue in some cases but might be cool.

And of course you could just record it and send it to them. Maybe a personal tour then, you send college kids abroad, and then get a list of places someone wants to see and they record walking to those places, the bus trip, everything and then record the places.