Archaeology and Heritage Apps.
An ever growing, utterly un-comprehensive list of useful archaeology/heritage/apps.
Geology/Pedology
iGeology – an app by the British Geological Society (free).
“iGeology is a free smartphone app that lets you take over 500 geological maps of Britain wherever you go to discover the landscape beneath your feet.”
iPhone & Android.
iGeology 3-D – an addon for the above app – well worth the download (free).
“Discover the geology of Britain in three dimensions! Use your camera to unlock the hidden details beneath your feet by painting geological maps over the landscape.”
Android only.
mySoil – a soil properties app from the people who know about these sort of things (free).
“mySoil gives you access to a comprehensive European soil properties map within a single app. Discover what lies beneath your feet and help us to build a community dataset by submitting your own soil information.”
iPhone & Android.
Archaeology
Archwilio – Welsh Archaeology (Free).
“Drawing information from over one hundred thousand records of archaeological sites in the Historic Environment Records of the Welsh Archaeological Trusts, the Archwilio app is a great way to find out more about the history and archaeology of Wales.”
Android.
Archaeology Britain App from the Archaeology Data Service/British Museum (Free).
“An app for everyone to explore, learn & enjoy British Archaeology and share their discoveries with the world.”
Archaeology Britain website – Android version in the pipeline.
Heritage Apps
Romans App from the Corinium Museum, Cirencester (£2.49).
“Romans brings the sites and objects of Roman Cirencester or Corinium Dobunorum together in a way that has never been possible before. Corinium was the second largest town in Roman Britain after London and once stood in the same place as today’s popular Cotswold market town, Cirencester.”
This app looks like it could be a winner – it contains a museum tour, a tour of the town as it was in the Roman period, and a ‘Learning Zone’ quiz which can be used on whiteboards in schools. Unfortunately someone took the decision to charge for it, and although £2.49 isn’t much in terms of pocket money, it’s reasonably expensive for an app. It would be a much better idea to give it away for free. If the point of charging is to see what revenue can be generated from apps, I’m afraid this is going to probably kill it off. Not many people have downloaded it, and the 2 reviews in the play store are contradictory, with one person slating it. Whether this is down to the app or the person is unclear, because the other revue is by someone who hasn’t had a chance to look at it properly yet. With 50 – 100 installs for the Android version, and 50 for the iOS version, the price seems to be putting people off. As I said, it would be better to give it away and judge its success in terms of downloads instead of sales – it may be harder to estimate how much revenue the app generates for the town through tourism, but I would imagine, in my inexpert capacity, that it could be a lot more that a couple of hundred sales of a £2.49 app.
So to sum up – this looks like it could be a winner, but if the Cotswold District Council (it’s funded by the local authority) could see their way to dropping the price to zero, it could work very well for them.
National Trust (free).
“Fancy a day out and wondering where to go? Want to visit glorious coastline, wander through wild countryside, relax in exquisite gardens or explore historic houses?”
iPhone & Android
Henry,
Thank you for posting this list! I’m looking forward to trying out some of the heritage apps and really looking forward to the Android version of the ADS’s Archaeology Britain app. I also have a list of useful archaeology software, apps, and app creation tools on my blog at http://www.diachronicdesign.com/blog/2013/08/27/6-archaeology-digital-data-tools/ . Two apps that come to mind as additions to your list are the FAIMS Mobile Data Collector App [https://www.fedarch.org/wordpress/mobile-application/] and Codifi, the Center for Digital Archaeology’s app for archaeology data presentation [http://www.codifi.info/products-codifi/].
There’s also;
Streetmuseum Londinium
Augmented Reality Roman Leicester
Calleva (Silchester) (IOS and Android)
Roman Walk (Caerwent)
which are all free
Chester Walls Quest
Hadrians Wall Country
both chargeable
I would just like to mention this one too newly released.
Pocket Guide Megaliths
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pocket-guide-megaliths/id1069332919?mt=8
Provides a convenient app to research the vast quantity of data available via the Megalithic Portal and makes an ideal tool for discovering ancient and prehistoric megaliths across the world.