Yes… there are now 29 cities featured in the Spotted by Locals network. The latest additions are Glasgow, Helsinki and Oslo.
I am very honoured and proud to be part of this great community even when I have – often times – neglected some of my Spotter duties over at the London cityblog. It is of no excuse so I will do harder and give our loyal followers more stories about the amazing city that is London.
There has been quite a lot of changes in Spotted by Locals both on the website and on mobile, too. Here are some of what I reckon are the cool ones.
Augmented Reality
Sounds like Lawnmower Man, right? Well, Wikipedia defines Augmented Reality as
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery.
Using the Layar app, you can download the Spotted by Locals layer that will show the nearest ‘spots’ to your location. When you point your smartphone’s camera to a ‘spot’ it will bring up the content that was posted on the Spotted by Locals website. If you are confused as to how it really works, check out the presentation below.
Google Maps Mashup
You are now able to see all the ‘spots’ with the accompanying link to post/article on a Google map! You can find this map in each cityblog. Click on the image below to see the map of the London spots.
Map of London spots
PDF Guides
If you still prefer the feel of paper in your hand, then download a PDF version of every city in the Spotted by Locals network. It is available for only €3.99, which you can pay via Paypal. It may contradict the basic Spotted by Locals principle that is doing away with the traditional travel guides, which are likely to have outdated information, but only for a little bit. How? Because each guide is an extract of the latest information of the posts on the website, which is kept very much up-to-date, so you are guaranteed to have the latest (and greatest!) information. For an idea of how the PDF guides look like, see below.
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