South African start-up, Mobiguide, has developed an audiovisual guide to SA's top tourism hotspots, downloadable to computer, mobile phone, and other transportable media devices.
The "virtual travel guide" is based on the audio guides used in international museums with a channel-agnostic twist. Audio visual clips can be downloaded to almost any device in several formats, including .flv, .mpeg4, .3gp - iPod, Java-enabled phones and Web-based services.
The clips range from around three to five minutes each and are built with homemade footage or stock photos from the national archives. The videos are also backed with musical soundtracks created by South African artists. They can be downloaded for R30 each.
According to Mobiguide executive director Dan Seidman, the process of downloading music and movies to phones or iPods is becoming a rooted trend and the market is now comfortable with it.
"There was no need to replicate the international models; we wanted the system to be innovative and used a platform that everyone can use," says Mobiguide executive director Dan Seidman.
The clips are small and are run in series to explain the various tourist attractions in SA. Narration is being translated into several international languages, including French, German, Spanish and Chinese, and the company is also adding several local languages.
Mobiguide aims to develop local language video clips to use in schools as educational tools, as well as cater for the 36 million South African tourists travelling locally.
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"There is little information around SA's tourist attractions about the country's rich history and interesting development. And South African museums and other tourist attractions don't have the money to generate audio guides to give that detail," says Mobiguide MD, Amanda Forsythe.
Forsythe says all clips are homemade with the minimum of technology. "I have been working on them myself. I am a passionate South African and want everyone to share in our history and cultures."
There are currently only a few clips available for download; however, the company hopes to have the majority of South African tourist attractions by the end of the year. Says Forsythe: "We will have everything in place by 2010."
She says local museums and tourism areas have few means of disseminating information about the heritage of each site. "A lack of funds and infrastructure prevents many local sites from using the audio guides used by international museums."
Mobiguide is approaching global positioning system companies, such as Garmin and TomTom, to market the tool on those devices.
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