I recently discovered this very cool project here in Galway called murmur. “Linking People to Places”? Sounds a lot like some Semantic Web or Linked Data thing. In a way it is, only it’s live and doesn’t (directly) involve the internet or URI. Instead, the people behind murmur have put up metal signs in different locations all over Galway. Each sign has a freefone number on it, which, if called, will get you to a recording of a story about the place where the sign was set up. The stories are all told by Galway locals, and were also recorded at the sign’s location.
I think this is a nice example of using technology to provide a better experience and understanding of a city. Conceptually it’s located somewhere in the vicinity of topics such as the internet of things, ubiquitous computing – only it doesn’t involve computing. :) It reminds me of a story where someone demonstrated the principle of topic maps with strings and other physical artifacts, thereby moving from the digital over to the physical domain.
Murmur has also been set up in other cities, such as Toronto, Edinburgh, Dublin, San José, Montreal, Calgary and São Paolo.