Who is this for?
Art galleries, gardens, historical buildings, historical societies, museums, walks…
in fact all inside and outside spaces.
We need testers and tour creators, give us an email to help be a part of this exciting journey.
Designed to be used online on a laptop/pc/ iPad/tablet (mobile phones, in future iterations)
The Title/Tour name allows for a title, a picture, a text summary, sponsor logos, and credits for the creator/ contributors to the tour. This is to act as a summary of the tour.
A point of interest is designed to be a trigger point giving a title and when a picture is uploaded with GPS positioning. It locates the point in space and changes the map.
This could be a viewing point/panorama (if outside) or a space within an art gallery, museum or a specific cabinet in a room.
Outside GPS is accurate at around 15 to 20m on most devices. Inside, the uses low energy Bluetooth beacons for location within 1m to 30m.
A point of interest is a place holder for content bundles or more detail on what can be seen from the point of interest’s radius. You can have many points of interest that contain many content bundles.
Points of interest can be edited as you wish.
These are the details of the tour and can include title, descriptive text, picture and audio files. There are unlimited content bundles per Point of interest. All of the above can be edited as required. All updates become effective immediately if a tour/trail has been published. Please publish and don’t worry if it is a work in progress, you can alter it at any time and it’s great to see that others are working on this. Don’t forget you’re the influencers of this developing system and the general public will only get to see and use it when it has been tried and tested.
Content bundles can be edited and reordered as you wish.
Once you have downloaded this you need to enable Bluetooth and location services at all times (for the moment) this is done as you open the app for the 1st time.
During beta testing it is possible to move around the map and view tours remotely.
Please bear in mind these are mostly tests and not many are complete tours. For a reasonable example go to Praze-An-Beeble near Camborne in Cornwall and try “A Tour of ChiLowarth” or Sedbergh near Kendal but in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and look at “Access the Outdoor Guide Killington New Bridge River Walk” If you do build a tour please publish it, doing so encourages others and unlimited edits are open to you. Editing is much easier, and updates happen immediately but are only viewable on the phone app after closing the tour on the phone and re-downloading the new version.
Get Organised
Make sure you know how to get those pictures onto your PC or laptop, ie have a google account and google photo’s on your phone, when using google log in using that account and download the pictures to your laptop/PC from google. If you record sound files on you tour using your mobile you will need to email them to yourself so you can download them to your laptop/PC. Maybe create a word document on your PC that you can type titles and text into for each step of the tour. Create a place on your computer to put all this stuff so you can find it when you build your tour.
Turn on GPS
If planning on creating an outside tour or walk, ensure GPS is turned on, on the device you intend to use to take photographs. GPS finds it difficult to locate a moving target so bear this in mind when setting up your tour. If objects are closer than 20 meters to each other choose one image as the point of interest (POI) and treat all the other pictures within that radius as content blocks surrounding that POI.
If working within a building perhaps treat a room as a POI and contents within the room as content blocks. A beacon can trigger from one to 30 meters, so it is possible to have several POI within a room but this will require more than one beacon and the trigger distance/radius should not overlap. If using pictures to enhance the guide they will not need GPS data and saved files can be used.
Sound
It is currently possible to add sound, pictures and text to each content block but not compulsory. So consider creating a document for the tour with text that can be copied and pasted when you are online creating the tour. Sound files can be recorded on a mobile device and saved or stored files can also be used. Now & Then does not have to operate in a linear manner so names may work better than numbers because each tour, POI or content block requires a title.
Now you are ready
Now & Then can make sure your target audience can find you and your content. Be an early adopter and help guide the future. Email mike@nowthen.uk for more information or your comments on your journey through the application, any problems encountered or suggestions that could make the experience more intuitive.
Chi Lowarth, Trethannas Gardens,
Praze-An-Beeble, Camborne,
Cornwall, TR14 0LL
+44 775 982 7359