BeyondGuide, Inc., a U.S.-based company that offers location-based audio guides to cities delivered over mobile phones, announced today that it has entered a partnership with Locality.de, a Bertelsmann company that delivers multimedia content about cities to PDAs.
The two companies are demonstrating their capabilities at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin.
IFA attendees can explore Berlin on their mobile phones using BeyondGuide's interactive and personalized audio guide service. Users can tell BeyondGuide what sight they are interested in and hear highly produced narrative, original, and reenacted audio, either in German or English.
For example, at the Reichstag, a user can listen to President John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Or at the Berlin Wall, hear the revolutionary excitement that surrounded the events of German Reunification in 1989. Visit the Locality.de/BeyondGuide booth (09) in Exhibition Hall 2.2b for a demonstration or call +1-866-334-8433 to try the Washington, DC service.
"Our partnership with Locality.de is important on two fronts. First, it allows BeyondGuide to expand its audio guide service quickly in Germany and the rest of Europe with the support of a highly established and respected partner. This is essential especially since Germans are the world's most active international travelers, accounting for over 70 million outbound departures annually. Second, we will leverage Locality's content and expertise in the PDA environment to offer tourists and locals the richest guides to cities imaginable - providing them with anything and everything they might want to know in whatever format best suits them and the device they are carrying," said Yechiam Halevy, President and CEO of BeyondGuide.
BeyondGuide currently offers service in Washington, DC, where users have access to content on over 120 sights in the city simply by dialing toll-free +1-866-33GUIDE. Subscribers pay US$10 for as much audio as they want to listen to during a 48-hour period.
"BeyondGuide's voice-driven audio service is the perfect complement to the online/PDA service Locality.de currently offers. The market for speech recognition applications is exploding and when we combine our rich and unique content and m-commerce functions with BeyondGuide's platform and audio content, the user who is exploring a city for the first time or as a local will be immersed in an entertaining and informative experience like never before," said Detlef Danitz, founder and CEO of Locality.de.
BeyondGuide and Locality.de expect to launch an integrated service offering in Europe and the U.S. in English and German by the close of 2001. For more information, please visit Exhibition Hall 2.2.b, Booth 09 at the IFA.
[ Home | Contact | MobiChat | Experts database | Let's do it ]
Comments to the content of this page can be posted on the MobiChat discussion group