Apps

London Explorer

London Explorer is available for both iOS and Android. It’s an interactive way of exploring over 100 of London’s famous, quirky and vanished places. It’s also *FREE*, so take the opportunity to test it out. I’ll update it from time to time, when I get the opportunity.

Download it now for Android on Google Play or for Apple iOS in the Appstore.

London Streets

London Streets, is available (also free) for both iOS and Android. It provides an interactive journey of exploration through the old streets of London, their origins and history.

The latest version added over 20 new streets, several new historic maps and a range of improvements and enhancements.

The app uses a variety of interaction techniques – from tap/touch to view full-screen images, to pinch-zoom in/out to see more detail, to sideways swipes to reveal more images and the use of a lens able to “see through time”.

London Streets includes:

• nearly 70 historic streets in the City of London
• over 100 historic and contemporary images
• 5 historic maps (from the Roman era and the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries)
• an “easter egg” of a panoramic view of London from 1616
• 3 “rediscovered” Victorian-style inventions (an early CCTV system, a rare example of a nearly-working Scroll-O-Scope, and a curious invention that automates interactive images of old London)

London Streets is optimised for larger screens and more recent devices – and at its best on tablets.

sonic London

sonic London was an app formerly available for the now defunct Windows mobile.

It contained original sound recordings from two well-known city locations – Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Each location had 20 alternative, processed versions of each sound. It provided the chance to explore what is often ignored – the aural aspects of a location rather than the visual – and to consider hidden aspects of the soundscape, and the sounds that may have existed in these famous locations in the past.

Each sound could be played on its own and tapped on/off. More than one sound could be played at the same time by tapping more than one “bubble”. The bubbles animated when a sound was playing and stopped when it is not. Each of these 20 sounds varied each time it is played. The original sound could also be toggled on/off by tapping on the ‘original sound’ checkbox at the bottom of the screen.