Dr. Lester and I were looking at the Metro Paris Subway app on a Saturday afternoon last fall and fantasizing about an iPhone app that would define a landscape through current events and history instead of where to buy coffee or ice cream. So we decided to send an application to the Knight News Challenge this year. The good news arrived a couple of weeks ago: we made it to the second round. 300 applicants have been selected from however many (last year it was 2300) applied in the first round, so a static graphic prototype and a few thousand words later puts us in front of the jurors again. Here’s a peek at our GPS device application (yeah, okay, initially developed for iPhone but created in a way that can be hacked or remixed for anything else), called What Happened Here?
Xtine,
I’m rooting for your success with the Knight News Challenge! I’d love to chat with you more about your concept, particularly from where you expect to harvest your local history datasets. I see so much potential here, particularly partnering with local history organizations. And I’m already thinking in terms of a CSUF campus app. I hope you don’t mind, but I mentioned your project to one of our public history professors who is very interested in chatting with you as well, and possibly carving out opportunities for public history grad students to help build the datasets.
Keep us posted on the progress with Knight.
Colleen Greene
Systems Librarian, The Pollak Library, California State University Fullerton