“iPhone app helps visitors in Smokies - Knoxville News Sentinel” plus 2 more |
- iPhone app helps visitors in Smokies - Knoxville News Sentinel
- Brooklyn's Seventh Annual Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk ... - PR Inside
- Take a museum journey of South Dakota - The Epoch Times
| iPhone app helps visitors in Smokies - Knoxville News Sentinel Posted: 26 May 2010 08:45 PM PDT 
A screengrab of the iPhone app made by Nomad Mobile Guides on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The app acts as a visitor's guide to the Smokies with information on things to do, see, know, and services. Planning a day in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park? Don't forget your iPhone. The country's most-visited national park has gone global with a free application, available for download through Apple's iTunes store, that includes guides, maps and other park information for handheld mobile devices. A $4.99 upgrade includes more in-depth info, like suggested hikes and drives. The app is 'location-aware' — in an area where you can get a GPS or cell signal, the program could map your location and advise you on nearby sights, elevation or even weather. But the content is on your device, so it can be used even in areas where a signal isn't available. Developed by Nomad Mobile Guides, the application uses 'quality' information by the nonprofit Great Smoky Mountains Association, which has published park guides about 50 years, said GSMA Executive Director Terry Maddox — not just a conglomeration of content cobbled together from random Web sites. 'We're doing this right,' said Maddox, who said the association started thinking about ways to make its published guides mobile about five years ago. In the process of redesigning its website, he said, the nonprofit met with Nomad's parent company, which saw potential and created a platform specifically for mobile national park guides. The beta version, using the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, debuted in February at a trade show at the annual National Parks convention. Now, said Maddox, guides for other parks, using the same platform so that they look and work the same way, are in development. Smartphone users have been able to download some guides and read them page-by-page, like a book. But this program is interactive; the user is able to skip around, personalize content, combine National Parks Service maps with, for example, Google maps, and, later, add other parks. 'We got to be the first, because we helped them realize there's nothing out there like this,' Maddox said. Though the app is just available for iPhone and iPod Touch, with an iPad app in development, downloads for phones that use Android and other systems are forthcoming, he said. He even expects, within the year, downloads to be available on the association's website — www.smokiesstore.org — and at a kiosk in its visitor center at the park. Right now, the nonprofit gets a percentage of the app sales on iTunes. Maddox has used the app and is 'very pleased.' 'When you have 9 million visitors' a year, he said, 'they can't all meet a ranger. … This is a wonderful resource.' Kristi L. Nelson may be reached at 865-342-6434. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Brooklyn's Seventh Annual Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk ... - PR Inside Posted: 26 May 2010 10:58 AM PDT 2010-05-26 20:01:01 - NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwire) -- 05/26/10 -- The Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk celebrates its seventh anniversary by showcasing over 200 artists in an interactive and participatory celebration of art and live music along Brooklyn's historic Atlantic Avenue, Saturday, June 5 and Sunday, June 6, 2010 from 1:00pm to 6:00pm each day and more events into the night.
Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk2010 provides high quality programming and free events for audiences of all ages while encouraging them to shop, dine, and support the arts at the same time. This is a rare opportunity for people to visit artists' personal workspaces, sneak peeks at innovative new works in progress, and meet with artists -- both famed and up-and-comers alike. Additionally, this year the event will include more live music/concerts, public mural projects, film screenings and a Block Party, including events at the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Held along the cultural corridor of Atlantic Avenue spanning Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn, this free event offers opportunities for art and music lovers to peruse, listen, collect works affordably, and indulge in neighborhood shops and dine in local restaurants all in the name of art and community.
HOW TO ARTWALK
For more information please visit www.ArtWalk2010.com :
ABOUT ARTWALK
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Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Take a museum journey of South Dakota - The Epoch Times Posted: 26 May 2010 11:19 AM PDT Great cities of the world are known for museums. While some choose destinations based on their desire to discover art treasures within, South Dakota is usually chosen to explore the without. Vast lands of wilderness, game parks, natural wonders, and man-made adventures like Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, and what's left of the Homestake Mine beckon. Along the way, there are some amazing museums that offer indoor discovery and ventures into everything from prehistory to the far-beyond of outer space. Rapid City, South Dakota, is a modern city, gateway to the Black Hills. Its regional airport is run efficiently and is served by major airlines making flights convenient from cities around the nation. The Journey The Journey Museum is housed in a modern building at 222 New York St. It is a convenient walk from Rapid City's Main Street. The city has life-size bronze sculptures of American presidents on every corner, posed in ways their families or sculptors determined they would most like to be depicted. The sculptures and Art Alley, where graffiti has found a useful home in free expression on walls and dumpsters, is only a prelude to a place that values art en route to one of the West's finest museums. Ray Summers is the executive director of the Journey Museum. He spent 30 years in the U.S. Air Force, much of his time stationed in South Dakota. He took the director's job after retirement and faced challenges his piloting skills have met with verve and creativity. Ray explained the organization of four separate collections designed as exhibits. The exhibits are arranged on a time line: prehistory and paleontology, archaeology, Indian arts and crafts and tribal life, and a pioneer collection that describes settler's influence on the West. "There's 2 ½ billion years of history in the Black Hills. We begin past the visitor's entrance with the theater. We use NASA's $30 million program made up of Hubble telescope files as well as those images from the European Space Administration," Ray said. The closest museum that has this NASA technology is in Denver. For the Journey to have a theater capable of taking visitors on a space flight that includes images of the Earth's magnetic field from outer space and an ability to zoom in on the Black Hills is a great accomplishment. Prehistory "The star room is next. We advance the Big Bang theory as well as Lakota Native American interpretation and tradition of creation. The Black Hills runs 120 miles from north to south and 60 miles east and west," Ray Summers explained. From the darkened star room, visitors journey into a room of rocks and rock formations that depict fossil evidence from ancient history when North America was under an ocean. Pictographs on rocks have been dated to about 7,000 years ago. Fossil studies and reconstruction of dinosaur bones from digs are conducted in the museum. Visitors can ask questions of volunteers working on fossils and often view works in progress as well as rare fossil evidence recovered from digs in South Dakota. It is this freedom and interplay with staff and volunteers that make the Journey museum seem intimate. Young people are welcomed with many projects and hands-on discovery crafts. The Sioux The Journey's Sioux Indian Museum is part of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board collection that includes rare and unique cultural objects of the Lakota and Dakota peoples that inhabited the region. There are buffalo hide tipis and elder interpretations from a tipi as well as remarkable Indian saddles. An exhibit describes the conversion from a dog culture, where travois of goods were carried by nomadic people using dogs, to a horse culture once Europeans introduced horses to North America. The pioneer era of the Journey Museum includes the controversial expedition by George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills in 1874. Gold was discovered, which heralded a call that saw thousands of fortune seekers flock to the Black Hills. Their presence was illegal and eventually led to exclusion of native peoples from their own lands. Battles and wars eventually witnessed the destruction of Indian culture and the confiscation of their lands and property by greedy intruders. Exhibits in the pioneer collection include rare art, military items, guns, saddles, and accouterments of trappers and settlers in the Black Hills. Deadwood Deadwood was the site of a major gold strike in 1875. The name became synonymous with the Wild West, where the only law was meted out at the end of a smoking six-gun. Deadwood is about an hour's drive from Rapid City, faster on the Interstate to Sturgis, capital of motorcycle mania one month a year, then on scenic route 14 A. The trip takes a little longer via Highway 385, a pleasant way to travel, time permitting. This is one trip where slower is better. Take time to enjoy the voyage, stop, hike, explore, wander off the road on trails, and take pictures. Deadwood has been around since 1876, when miners gambled and enjoyed the town's vices. Visitors can still enjoy Deadwood's vices, if gambling is your thing, as well as the area's rugged outdoor beauty. One place to start to learn about the history and folklore of the area is the Adams Museum. Deadwood is a walking town; nothing is far from Main Street. Look for the architectural gem of the County Courthouse, red-brick and stone buildings—and there's the museum. Visitors often rush themselves through attractions on the way to souvenir shops and food emporiums. Deadwood offers plenty of everything, including modern casinos. Gambling, always a pursuit in town since the first miners arrived, has been legalized for the last 20 years. Modern casinos incorporate all manner of gaming in town. Wild Bill Hickock Leave time for the Adams Museum. The building itself is a fine brick structure, solid enough to house an actual mine locomotive. Discovery begins at the main entrance, where life-size cutouts of famous Deadwood characters line the hall. Wild Bill Hickock is prominent among them. No place else in the world will you be able to view the actual playing cards he held when an assassin shot him in the back of the head in Deadwood's Number 10 saloon. His six-gun, holster, and belt, along with the lucky stone he kept in his boot, are on display. His pal Charlie Utter's gun is also displayed with artifacts from the first mining exploits in the area. The Adams is intimate; it is a people-friendly museum and contains displays reminiscent of frontier history and the discovery of gold. Art work, including an original sketch of Wild Bill Hickock by Wyeth, is displayed. There is a fascinating drawing by Crow Dog, done while he was in jail awaiting trial for killing another Indian. The sketch depicts Crow Dog's rendition of the horseback attack on his adversary. There are period displays of clothing and buggies, Chinese porcelain and artifacts from the population that came to Deadwood to work in mines or in service jobs during the boom-town years. Frontier justice was swift, and vigilantes came to exact punishment for crimes. The Adams Museum experience enhances an appreciation for the history and folklore of the area, just as the Journey Museum offers insight into the larger picture of discovery. The great outdoors lies beyond museum portals once appreciation and knowledge are gained through collections—unique world-class collections—available no place else. To obtain more information about South Dakota and for free travel guides, maps, and brochures, contact the South Dakota Department of Tourism at 1-800-732-5682 or visit www.travelsd.com. For information and brochures about Rapid City, call toll-free 1-800-487-3224 or visit www.visitrapidcity.com. Deadwood information is available by phone 1-800-999-1876 or at deadwood.com. To contact the museums directly, call The Journey Museum at 605-394-6923 or go to www.journeymuseum.org. For the Adams Museum, call 605-578-1928 or visit www.adamsmuseumandhhouse.org. John Christopher Fine is the author of 24 books. His prize-winning photographs appear as covers for magazines and newspapers in the United States and Europe. He is a columnist for a major newspaper chain and writes feature stories for newspapers around the world. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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