High-tech tour books

By: Adam Balkin, New York 1

No more paper maps & tourbooks, human guide, or even those large plastic audio devices that you hold up to your ear. Racontours are new multimedia tours of Manhattan – tours you download to your digital handheld or high-end Smartphone. “You have the same type of experience you would have sitting on your couch watching a documentary, but it’s interactive and you’re actually taking it, standing right there in the place that you’re learning about, so it combines the immediacy of actually being there with the resources that you have in a complete multimedia system,” Michael Guthrie of Racontours said. “We show you old images, maps, lithographs, portraits, you get to listen to expert testimony from expert authorities on the subject, and you get to walk around at your own speed, by yourself. There are no groups, no buses – you can do it when you want [and] stop for lunch.” You can also download audio to your mp3 player.

Read the rest of the article at news8austin.com.

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