Received the following email from Andy Hunter of Electric Literature. It looks like an interesting product – although why these techy types think its cute to deliberately misspell titles is beyond me:
Broadcastr, a project by Electric Literature, just released an iPhone app which automatically plays audio stories specific to your GPS location. The iPhone app is free, and can be downloaded here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/broadcastr/id423169367?mt=8
I think your readers would be interested in Broadcastr as a way to discover great stories and as a megaphone for sharing their own.
Broadcastr is a social-media platform for location-based storytelling. Our new iPhone app lets people take a walk while recordings about their surroundings stream automatically into their headphones. It’s like an audio tour of the whole world, and anyone can contribute.
A reader might use Broadcastr to discover a daughter telling the story of her mothers long love affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald:
http://beta.broadcastr.com/share?audioId=1378044-1002or, Jennifer Egan reading from A Visit From the Goon Squad:
http://beta.broadcastr.com/share?audioId=893026-16001or, one man’s deep thoughts on Shakespeare:
http://beta.broadcastr.com/share?audioId=233001-90002
We all fall into routines, and travel the same paths every day. The Broadcastr mobile app reveals layers of narrative in the streets around us, connecting us to a wealth of memory we may never have discovered otherwise.
I think they use a funky spelling so they can trademark the name. You can’t trademark something that is totally generic.
Funky spellings are easier to find in a web search, too.
Anyway, sounds like a project with a lot of potential!