Grants:IdeaLab/uGuide
status: withdrawn
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project:
idea creator:
Angelo.galanti
project contact:
angelo.galanti
gmail.com
participants:
grantees:
summary:
An innovative geolocalized audioguide for tourists based on TTS and wikipedia articles
2013
uGuide round 2
[[Category:IEG 2013
uGuide round 2]]
Project idea
editWhat is the problem you're trying to solve?
editDo you ever wanted to know more about places around you?
Have you ever been on holiday and had no idea of what the big old building next to you is?
Of course you can buy a guide or ask the guy walking past you, but there should be a better option...
Right! If you are in an important city you can probably find an guide App you can download on your smartphone.
But what if you are in a small village or in a medium sized city?
Or even if you are in a big city it is very unlikely the guide App you found has mapped all the buildings and monuments around you.
So what can you do?
What is your solution?
editImagine to have an App, free, available worldwide, that speaks to you and teach you about all the nice monuments around you.
How?
Wikipedia has a lot (circa 100.000 articles in the English version) of geo-localized contents regarding monuments and historical buildings. Well that's a good start!
But you do not want to read text on your tiny smartphone screen, you want to look at the building. Moreover Wikipedia contents are meant to be read not listened. So we have to automatically parse the text article removing notes and unnecessary stuff such as External links, Bibliography and so on.
Good! Now we have a nice geo-localized article, but we do not want to read. So we use a TTS (text-to-speech) engine in order to convert the content to audio.
Now we have a wonderful geo-localized audio-guide based on Wikipedia and it is even multilingual (provided that the Wikipedia article exists in the desired language).
Project goals
editThe project can stimulate Wikipedia users to create new voices regarding historical buildings and monuments and can be a wonderful opportunity to learn when you are on holiday, visiting a new place or simply waiting for the bus next to the old building you had no idea was the birthplace of your favorite painter!
Get involved
editWelcome, brainstormers! Your feedback on this idea is welcome. Please click the "discussion" link at the top of the page to start the conversation and share your thoughts.