Murmur Toronto - folk stories via mobile phone
Published on 6 Aug 2007 at 10:56 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Mobile.
There is this mobile service, very interesting in Toronto. They call it Murmur.
While you’re walking around in Toronto in Canada, there’ll be signs around the street. It’s like the “tubero” signs we have in Metro Manila, tubero or lipat-bahay signs. Around Toronto there’d be a metal plate about the size of a plate, a dinner plate.
There would be two numbers there. There’d be code number 1 and then code number 2. It says dial the first number.
I was with my cousin walking around Kensington’s street and we saw the sign and then it had two numbers. So on my mobile phone, a prepaid Fido sim, I dialed the first number.
We were both listening to my phone after dialing the number and then somebody answered.The guy said “what’s the code?”.
I was looking at my cousin: “what did he say?”
We couldn’t get it so we hang up the phone.
We tried a second time. We dialed the number — something like 2366 something like that — dialed the number and then again a guy answered and he said: “What’s the code?”.
“Oooh…the code!” I looked at my cousin, it was the second number on the plate posted on the plate along the street.
I keyed in the second number, something like 1234. Then after keying in the second number, the guy on the other side on the phone would start to say “Hey ok you are at Kensington Street. You see that orange house across the street, that orange house was etc etc…”
And then the guy (of course it was a recording right?) … the guy would continue to tell stories about things around the location you are standing, where the plate and the code numbers are.
So in essence, murmur — the mobile service that we were listening to — is a sharing of stories about the places around Toronto. It’s like having a friend telling you interesting stories about the place.
It could be good for tourism, I think. It’s like a tour guide. And us Filipinos being very savvy about all these mobile technologies, I think this is something that we could use. I could remember audio tour guides in some of the museums in Manila, so it’s something like that. The audio tour guide was a recoded voice, sometimes in English or sometimes in Filipino. And then the voice over the earphones would guide you through the museum he’d say “..turn to your left and you will see the Juan Luna painting..this Juan Luna painting was etc etc..”
The murmur service is similar to that and it’s just technology enabled, mobile enabled. This is something we could use, let’s see where this kind of service can be used in the Philippines.
So to learn more about that service, visit http://murmurtoronto.ca.
Interesting stories you can pick up there. Keep murmuring.
Podcast permalink: Murmur Toronto - Folkstories via mobile phone
EdXcribe
6 August 2007
Technobiography
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The future of call centers. « meaningful meanderings on 7 Aug 2007 at 4:24 am: 1
[…] The future of call centers. For a short animated introduction, check out “Murmur in teh Philippines“. Murmur is an interesting Toronto-based mobile service. They put up street signs with codes and when you call those codes, they narrate to you stories about that place. Ka Edong has a more in-depth write-up. […]