The city of Graz , city partner in HerO URBACT project, now offers visitors the opportunity to explore the modernity and cultural historic flair of the city in an innovative and playful way, making use of the newest iPhone application “Urban Touch – Graz City Guide on iPhone”. Within seconds the Urban Touch provides useful information about Graz’ World Heritage Site, showing maps, photos and historical data.
The Urban Touch is initiated by the company ARCH’IN Information Architecture Helmut Pierer and developed in collaboration with technology partner Exthex GmbH. The application includes a large selection of clear high quality photos of more than forty attractions in the World Heritage area and many other snapshots of the Styrian State capital.
Furthermore the users have access to the entire city map of Graz and a large amount of high-resolution aerial photographs, which offers them the possibility to take close look at the different
objects before defining their actual path. Because the digital city guide is an offline version, it has no roaming costs. The development is a further step in e-services towards citizens and is a basis for the development of other e-services. The intention is to continue with the improvement and strengthening of the application to create even more benefits.
This could be for example a calendar of events, an expansion of the sites and images (showing not only the exterior but also the interior of the monument), the adding of attractive places for youth and the implementation of the most common e-government solutions. Urban Touch currently works on the iPhone and iPad OS4. The appropriate version for iPhone 3G is coming soon. In addition it is already planned to make the electronic guide operational with Android and Windows Mobile.
Read more:
- HerO Newsletter – URBACT website
Barbara Bühler
HerO Project Communication Officer
