New Audio Tours: iJourneys

Today's NY Times has an artucke about a new audio tour company, iJourneys. It looks like a good one. [iJourneys]

Sounds for Sights - Audio Walking Tours

There was a comment on this blog a while back about another website offering audio tours, Sounds for Sights. I don't think they offer them directly through iTunes, but you can buy them off their website. It seems to be limited now to New York City, but expanding to Boston and DC soon.

More on PodGuides

Today's Boston Globe has an article, Audio-tours de force, today on PodGuides, though they don't use the name. The article talks about one company, Audissey Guides, which is producing digital audio tour guides, though these don't seem to be avaible directly on iTunes. The Globe is also carrying an AP story, Georgia college pushes for iPod ingenuity, about iPod uses for the classroom. One of these uses is an an audio museum tour for one of the classes. I am seeing more and more audio tours available online. For a recent trip to Chicago, I found a free audio tour to Chicago's new Millenium Park.

Be a Podguide!

I have writtien before about audio tour podcasts, where anyone can make a audio tour of anywhere and distribute it as a podcast to anyone with an iPod. I would like to call on anyone with something interesting to say to create podguides about their favorite places. Whether it is a museum exhibit or the local downtown or ever a nearby mall, take a walk through it with your tape recorder and let everyone know why it is worth visiting. Though this would help any person see what you see, it would greatly help the visually impaired, like myself, see what we cannot see alone.

Lend us your eyes!

Audio Tour Podcasts

The Times featured an article, With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour, a few months back that highlights a great idea. Folks are creating their own audio tours of museums and distributing them as podcasts. This is fantastic for two reasons.

First, this open up more possible source for audio tours. Museum-goers no longer need to depend on museums to develop decent audio tours. Many museums don't have the resources or choose not to spend their resources on developing audio guides, so there are many museums and exhibits that don't have audio tours. Now anyone interested can make one. Not all podcast tours will be good, but some will be. There is now opportunity for varied viewpoints to emerge. Competition among any tour guide developers should eventually develop a good selection for the museum goer. This could also be extended outside museums to walking tours of cities or other places of interest. [Audible.com already offers audio walking tours of the Big Apple in the Soundwalk series.]

Secondly, creating podcasts is a very democratic process, meaning that it is free and fairly easy to do. So anyone, including you or I, can create our own audio tours of our favorite places. Many people have amazing knowedge and insights that would make for great audio tours. Now, with a computer and a little drive, you can share your thoughts and insights with the rest of us.

All we need now is a directory of audio tours which may already exist. Podcastdirectory.com already lists a few audio tour podcasts. Podguides.net appears to be a good effort to coordinate and encourage these audio tours.

PS The LA Times also has an interesting article on audio tours.

Review: Audio Travel Guides

The NY Times had a review a while ago called Put the Guidebook Away and Listen While You Look about a new service that provides audio travel guides. Though I have not had a chance to try these $10 guides, I look forward to doing so on my next trip. I am very sick and tired of trying to fish for my reading glasses to squint at the tiny print in today's printed guides. Currently, the site only offers tours of five US cities and one English city, but I imagine that they are busy expanding their selection.

NYTimes: MoMA Helps Visitors To Use Ears To See

This is a little off-topic, but interesting nonetheless. A few weeks ago the New York Times ran an article, "MoMA Helps Visitors To Use Ears To See" on the front page of its Arts section describing the Museum of Modern Art's launch of a new set of audio guides. One of these audio tours, called Visual Descriptions, is meant to present "extended visual descriptions of highlights from the Museum’s permanent collection especially for blind or partially sighted visitors." MoMA claims that it is the first of its kind. I hope that it is not the last. Audio guides are very helpful for me, even when I can see the exhibition. You can find out more about this audio guide from Acoustiguide's website. More and more museums seem to offer audio tours, so check with any museum that you visit. It never hurts to ask.