A prototype mobile tourism application, re:call allowed visitors to Vancouver’s popular Granville Island to virtually explore and navigate everything available to do and see on the Island using handheld PDAs. The location-aware wireless application was developed and designed by 7th Floor Media as part of the Mobile MUSE Research Network, with the goal of using mobile technology to create a more dynamic, fulfilling visitor experience.
Using re:call, visitors to Granville Island could use hand-held PDAs to take pictures, send postcards to friends and family and record their reviews of local restaurants and stores. Using location detection, re:call also provided information about the history of nearby places and activities of Granville Island as explained by a local historian and allowed visitors to navigate their way around the shops and services on the Island.
Re:call also allowed visitors of Granville Island to create a time-and-location-stamped personal journal of the places they visited, complete with historical and professional facts, community comments, and personal notes and pictures. Visitors could access their journals later either through the re:call mobile application or online, and could choose to share journal entries with their friends.
The re:call application was tested on Granville Island in the spring of 2005.

