Integrating stories and geography
I liked this, which I saw the other day (Hat Tip: Virginia Murdoch). It’s a story in the “hard-boiled” genre, told in bite sized chunks with each chunk connected to its location on Google Maps. As I said, I liked it, but it didn’t really hold my attention I don’t think because I’m not familiar with the location it connected the story to in this intimate way.
Now: how cool would it be if there was a tool so we could all tell stories like this? I know there are already tools out there that make use of the Google Maps API and let people plot things out, but this would be something much more dedicated, and perhaps simpler: just a set of tools specially designed for story telling.
Virginia Murdoch
March 26th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Ha, well, we’re working on something that you might be interested in. Stay tuned in… I dunno, July.
maxine
March 26th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Oh I will…intrigued.
Tim Lucas
April 1st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Ah cool. I love the sample story at the beginning to help you understand how it works by making you browse through a dummy one. Just console game’s training level. Learn by doing rather than by reading.
The whole stories via map is really weird. Coming up with your own mental geographic map of a story is something we’re so used to doing… having it shown to us as an important part of the narrative is odd. I should probably be spending more time looking at both the map and the words but there’s a tendency to just read quickly and just keep hitting next.
On a slightly related tangent I was thinking how best to use the media and stories we created on the recent trip to asia: what would be a great way to tell a story about our trip using photos, videos, maps and narrative, whilst still retaining the links to my social networks such as flickr, facebook, etc, for commentary and socialising. I haven’t really given it much thought as to the implementation yet… but thinking about it now, that might be an interesting web app. There’s travel diaries and the sort, but anything to let you really tell a story?
maxine
April 1st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Totally agree with you Tim about the story not really engaging me - that’s why I wondered whether it would if it was happening in a landscape with which I was familiar. Or maybe, better, one I felt some nostalgic connection with.
Yeah, I like your idea too, and I’m always fond of projects that pull in existing services like that. Some smart travel oriented business like Lonely Planet or Global Gossip should set a lazy half a mill aside and build something like that.