The site New York Songlines (http://nySongLines.com) draws a parallel between Australian aboriginal navigation songs and getting around New York:
"The Aboriginal Australians were able to navigate across their harsh and unforgiving land by memorizing and following the Songlines--an intricate series of song cycles that identified the landmarks that one needed to pass to get where one needed to go. These songs described how the features of the land were created and named during the Dreamtime, the timeless era when the giants, heroes and monsters that serve as totems for the Aboriginal tribes walked the earth... "...by relying on maps, signs and Manhattan's perpendicular geography, New Yorkers have given up something important: a sense of place. If you can get from your starting place to your destination without knowing anything about the points in between, chances are you won't pay much attention to them. And we do hurry about town without looking up, many of us, walking by the same buildings hundreds of times without noticing what they are or even what they look like." Today I took my PDA down to outside BWAY.net, accessed the Songline for Broadway at Prince and successfully walked the block investigating the buildings: http://home.nyc.rr.com/jkn/nysonglines/broadway.htm#prince This is a great mobile application and a great problem area. The interface is retro-simple (HTML tables), but it's fun and easy: http://www.nysonglines.com/ I'd love to see an application that allowed user comments, pictures, recordings, on a per building basis--sort of like a bulletin board of the city. Rob __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
