I'm doing something similar for local news/events, called SeeAround.me, where people can see/submit local news stories and their locations. But I could see sort of a cross between that and Your Audio Tour as particular interesting for people who want to do their own walking tours, for example.
I already made that for a client. Don't think users will write stories from their mobile, at least good ones. It was difficult to start with no content, too similar to twitter.
Project: SeeAround.me - an app to see and share hyperlocal news by location (like Waze for what's happening nearby). All content is user generated, with most of it in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley for now.
Frustration: It's hard to see what's happening near you based on your location (hyperlocal news, events, restaurant openings/closures, construction, etc.) Local news is distributed across so many sources, and it's not easy to see where exactly stories are taking place.
In the U.S. we force children to sit still through hours of classes, wonder why they get distracted, and then medicate them. In other countries kids get more breaks to expend energy and are then more attentive - e.g., http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-fin... "In every one of the experiments, students were more attentive after a break than before a break. They also found that the children were less attentive when the timing of the break was delayed—or in other words, when the lesson dragged on."
You may accuse me of a lack of imagination, but I don't understand how Asterion's story is supposed to be conveyed by him.
Taking him at his word he shouldn't be able to write, and it would be most fitting if his story were just an internal monologue but the "footnote" about 14 meaning infinite disallows that possibility.
The "power" of a short story rests in its ability to imply interesting things that your imagination can play around with.
When you read the original story of Theseus and the Minotaur do you ask yourself the same question? Is the story less powerful because it couldn't be true as written?
The Apollodorus Bibliotecha is real compendium of Greek myths written in the 1st or 2nd century AD. The first section of the first book is the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. The House of Asterion is the same story told from the Minotaur's perspective.
The fact the the story itself includes the meta-fictional footnote implies this isn't the "original" and that the person writing this isn't the Minotaur himself. Borges like to play with this conceit in many of his stories, e.g., "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." Don Quixote itself uses the same conceit, i.e., that what you're reading is something found and transmitted (and possibly altered).
So, to start, it might be worth putting up this story and the story of Theseus and the Minotaur side-by-side. What are some differences?
For example, why does Borges have the Athenians sending nine people into the labyrinth rather than seven? Borges wrote extensively about Dante and the Minotaur is in Dante's inferno, so it wouldn't totally surprise me if there's some connection between the nine people who get sent in and the nine circles of Hell in the Inferno.
etc. etc. etc. Peeling back these onion layers is why a lot of people enjoy reading Borges.
A few people have been using it in the bay area, mainly in Oakland and Barkeley and a few in SF. Note that in other locations you can still use it, but there isn't much content to see!
Interesting. I like the idea, but isn't this pretty similar to "bre.ad"? -- as far as I know, they weren't able to turn it into a viable business and the Yahoo! acquisition was an acquihire.
yes we use the interstitial experience like bre.ad however if im not mistaken this was used from mainly for publishers like say Techcrunch sharing their own content?
We are trying to incentivize sharing other peoples content as it pertains to your niche.
example:
Hillary clinton (user) -> shares news article from Politico about her policies -> before getting to article you see a donation page.
I saw the interstitial example. It looks slick. I think Bre.ad was for influencers, too. Do you know what didn't work for them and what you are doing differently? Are people able to make enough for you to take a cut or fee?
great question, there was some debate on whether or not they were making significant revenue.
we are trying to monetize this by not doing a SaaS model but instead an agency model where we would handle most all the work to then be able to charge a premium to these influencers.
The problem: hyperlocal news is fragmented - on news sites, blogs, newsletters, events pages, etc. I built this so the local community can see, submit, curate, and discuss local news, all in one place and with a map.
maybe the mobile app is better but when I want to post something I thought I would get an option so oauth and submit something from my social account not a file I have on my computer.
You mean there was an issue with Facebook login..? It should only try to open a file from your computer if you're submitting a story and try to attach an image.
Re mobile: It's too complex for a small screen, so there's a mobile page that just says there will be an app soon.
No i logged in without fb (just to see that experience first). so this is used more to kind of geo see what is going on around you? wouldn't an instagram be the best integration because then you can see events that are going on around you?
At first I thought I could just try to pull in geo-tagged feeds from Instagram, Twitter, and other sources. The trouble is, most of that content is not actually about the location. Someone might say, "I love lasagna!" and it's geotagged nearby. Unfortunately, I found there's simply too much noise for that approach to work.
Edit: The answer to your first question is, yes, that's exactly what it's for!: to see news within a certain radius of where you are.
That's an interesting thought. My initial reaction is that people wouldn't use that until this was more established, which leads to sort of a catch-22 situation, but I like the idea. Another consideration with the hashtag is that there's a lot of content that already exists, too, instead of being original content (e.g. a news story compared with a Twitter/Instagram post), so relying too heavily on a hashtag approach could exclude that content.
