Mobile Python: Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform

11.2. Manhattan Story Mashup

Manhattan Story Mashup is an urban storytelling game, designed by the authors of this book, that combines mobile phones, the web and a large public display into interactive, collaborative street art. The game is based on real-time interaction between mobile phone and web users. A storytelling tool on the game's website allowed anybody to write stories that were illustrated in real-time by almost two hundred street players in New York, taking photos with Nokia N80 camera phones. Once a story was fully illustrated, it was presented on a large public display in Times Square (see Figure 11.4).

The street players were given points according to how many individual nouns – which were extracted from the web stories – they could illustrate successfully. The success was validated by another street player who was asked to match the newly taken photo with the original noun in a multiple-choice test. If she was able to match the correct noun with the photo, both the guesser and the illustrator were awarded points.

Figure 11-4. Manhattan Story Mashup in Times Square

The game proved to be fun and engaging. During 90 minutes of playing, the street players took 3142 photos and made 4529 guesses to validate each other's photos. In total, 115 stories were written by the web players. While illustrating these stories, the street players visited 197 distinct GSM cells ...