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PRESS RELEASE (September 2011) SOUTHEND AUTHOR TAKES HISTORY INTO THE FUTURE Southend-based local history author Ian Yearsley has taken history into the future with his latest publication about his home town. Ian, who lives in Eastwood and has a strong IT background, has produced an historic tour of the town which is downloadable on iPhone. 'I discovered a company called Past Preservers who were commissioning historical content for iPhone applications,' Ian told us, 'and with my joint background as a local history author and IT specialist I thought straightaway that this was a great new way to make history available to more people and bring it to life in the process.' Ian's tour, entitled 'Historic Southend', uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) capability which is available on most modern phones to take the user around historic sites in the town, showing them old photographs and explaining the historic background at each site as they work their way around iconic seafront attractions like the pier, the Kursaal and the ‘Royal Hotel’. ‘Visually, the tour is similar to a traditional local history book,’ said Ian, ‘marrying historic photographs with a narrative description, but it has the added advantages of being pocket-sized and being able to exploit technology such as GPS to take the user to exact physical co-ordinates such as the viewing tower on Pier Hill from where he or she can learn about the historical context out in the field and see how the modern locations compare with the historic pictures.’ iPhone users can download Ian’s tour via an iPhone application called RAMA for the very reasonable price of $1.99 (approximately £1.30 at the time of writing). (Prices are currently in dollars because the publisher, Crimson Bamboo, is an American company.) For more information see www.ian-yearsley.com, http://www.pastpreservers.com/ or http://www.crimsonbamboo.com/. iTunes users can find out more on there. END
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