Tools for Transmedia part 5

There are constantly opening up new services and software that could be used in a transmedia setting, and I will admit it is hard to keep up. So a big thanks to Scott Walker for pointing me in the direction of two more of these, this time focusing on enhancing geolocating possibilities, Voxora and Geoloqi.

Voxora

This is a service that on the surface is basic, yet does something no one has done before (at least to my knowledge). Voxora ties in with your Foursquare account and lets you leave a message tied to the location you are in, a voice message that you can listen to yourself and that others can listen to as well, by calling a certain number.

Now, I have not been able to try this out, so I might be missing something. I think it would be a wonderful tool for just about anyone doing transmedia stuff; this could be used, for example, to leave voice messages for people at certain locations, messages that tie in with some sort of ARG or other – could potentially be quite powerful stuff.

It could also be tied to a viewing of a movie at a cinema, for instance; at the end of Avatar, if there would’ve been a number there to call, where Jake would have told me 30 seconds more of how life on Pandora went on after the humans had left, I would’ve called that number immediately. Basically, Voxora has potential to be of very good use for transmedia content developers.

Geoloqi

This is a somewhat similar service, but handier for a developer of transmedia. Through the interface – a world map with a simple interface – you can drop Geonotes just about anywhere (like dropping a geonote on the grocery store before leaving the house, which means you won’t have to bring a shopping list). Through the website you can also drop notes for other users – just know the username of the user and you can decide where on the map you want to leave a geo note for them. This note will then pop up when they go past that place.

Now, the ways to use this service in the realms of Transmedia are numerous. The only hitch being that at the moment you would need for people to sign up, and in some way, shape or form tell you their user name on the service, for you to be able to create these geo notes for them.

On the other hand, once you have their usernames, you just have to plant clues, information, greetings, reminders or conversation out there, in their geologically logical places. If you’re shooting a documentary, you could concievably have messages ready for different places that were seen in the documentary, places of interest, and have these messages communicated to people who are dedicated followers of the subject or of the documentary itself.

These were just a couple of examples, and more Tools for Transmedia are sure to spring up. In the meantime, does anyone have any experience of using the examples above? I’d be happy to hear more.