HP today announced a prototype software suite and website to enable people to design, create and share location-based experiences, games and tours with friends, family and others, anywhere in the world. The site makes available a new HP Labs technology, code-named “mscape,” that overlays digital sight, sounds and interactions on the physical world to create immersive and interactive experiences called mediascapes. The site, www.mscapers.com designers of all ages to create post and share their digital location-based mediascape experiences. Mediascapes can be created using simple, web-based authoring wizards. For more advanced mediascapes, a PC-based authoring toolkit is available for download. The mscape player is also available for mobile devices. Users equipped with a GPS-enabled mobile device running the mscape player can move through the physical world, triggering digital media – including images, text, sounds, audio and video – in response to physical events such as location, proximity, time and movement.
Blending online information with gaming, storytelling and the outdoors, mediascapes can offer people of all ages a new way to experience their surroundings. The website provides everything people need to develop their own mediascapes, including training and tips to get started. There are numerous ready-made mediascapes at the site, which can be downloaded by anyone with a GPS-enabled HP iPAQ or other handheld device running the Windows Mobile operating system.
