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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Philadelphia unveils “Soundabout” walking tours
Disclosure: I was involved in the development and am working on the marketing of this project.
What began as an idea for podcasting walking tours of Philadelphia has been unveiled as a “Soundabout Philly,” a series of audio walking tours with accompanying maps. Produced by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation with funding and participation from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Soundabout Philly launched as part of the GoPhila site on Monday with three tours: My Philly (spots favored by locals), Philadelphia Flavorhoods (dining and snacking), and History Unplugged (Independence Hall, Carpenter’s Hall, etc.).
The audio files are available as podcasts—that is, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds for each tour as one way to retrieve the audio clips and to receive new installments as they become available; there’s also an option to download directly to iTunes.. You can also subsribe to be notified when new tours are added. But it’s the interactivity on the site that sets it apart from other audio walking tours. First, the site uses the Google Maps API to pinpoint the location of each stop on the tour. From within the map, you can listen to the tour segment, download it, or read more on the topic. You can add segments to your personalized tour, mixing and matching from the three themed tours, and save the various tours you create. And you can print the maps with the various stops on the tour to use as a guide as you walk and listsen.
The tour is designed to be as useful to somebody sitting at home in St. Louis as it is to those with their earbuds jacked into their ears as they stroll Philadelphia’s historic streets. The site is already earning positive press.
