It was nice to see that a huge international corporation like Google still felt the need to call on a bit of local help in setting up a new smartphone app to help people enjoy the history and heritage of a city like Bath even more.
The free download they have developed is called ‘Field Trip’ and – according to Google – it’s ‘your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you.
Field Trip runs in the background on your phone. When you get close to something interesting, it pops up a screen with details about the location.
No click is required. If you have a headset or bluetooth connected, it can even read the info to you.’
It’s all very clever – and Google has sourced information from lots of organisations for the Field Trip App – but they also decided to ask Dan Brown from the city’s online ‘Bath in Time’ photographic archive – www.bathintime.co.uk – to provide unique historic visuals to give the app a real local spin.
Dan told the Virtual Museum: “I am always looking for new ways to interpret the vast collection of historical images from Bath in Time in different ways and I am delighted to have been given the opportunity by Google to help tell part of the fascinating story of Bath, its people, buildings and landscape in this new way”
He then asked your Director – here at the Virtual Museum – if l could put a personal slant in providing the information to go alongside the photographs.
It was something l agreed to do – having also called in a good friend to help.
She’s Audrey Woods – one of the longest-serving and most knowledgeable of the Mayor of Bath’s Corps of Honorary Guides – an organisation that has been giving twice-daily FREE tours (and also extra-special ones and group tours) of Bath for eighty years!
Check them out on www.bathguides.org.uk/
Audrey has been showing people around the city for forty years and – having recently acquired her own computer ‘tablet’ – now finds herself helping to write a history and heritage programme for one of the Internet’s biggest providers!
Just ‘google’ Google to find the Field Trip app.
