This presentation discusses a mobile app for iPhone and Android powered by Map2App that is designed to guide visitors around the Angel Island State Park in the San Francisco Bay, California, and engage them in the island's interesting history. It was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, April 2013 in Honolulu.

1. Angel Island Mobile
Ruth Tringham, U.C. Berkeley and
Center for Digital Archaeology and
Pietro Ferraris, Map2App
CoDA
Center for Digital Archaeology

2. Videowalks-the Original Idea:
The Remediated Places Project
From 1997 to 2008, with Steve Mills and Michael Ashley, I ran an archaeological project and
then an interpretive multimedia project at a 9000 year old mound settlement at Çatalhöyük,
Turkey called the Remediate Places Project. As part of the latter I developed self-guided tours
around this very large site, incorporating multimedia content that could be served to mobile
devices.

3. Videowalks-the Original Idea
The Remediated Places Project project emerged out of a dream for video-tours at Çatalhöyük
using a technology that at that time (2004-2007) did not exist. You can see Steve Mills here
pretending to use the content on his iPod which was being activated by a wi-fi cell nearby (in
my imagination)

4. Technology changes
Mobile Technology,
Smart Phones
GPS
The technology now is much more appropriate to self-guided tour development using mobile
devices than it was when I left off the project in 2007, let alone when I first started 2004. This
is due to the huge increase in global positioning system satellite coverage reaching to places
in the middle of nowhere like Çatalhöyük, and smart mobile phones that have GPS
capabilities built in them, as well as cellular technology that enables them to communicate
with servers on the fly.

5. Mobile Travel Guides
Creation Platform
Pietro Ferraris
Then in 2012 through my colleagues at CoDA I came in contact with this guy, Pietro Ferraris,
one of the founders of Map2App (http://www.map2app.com/). I realized that with their
platform map2app I might be able to put my dream into practice. And so I became one of
their Beta authors. Map2app is the first web platform to turn travel related content into high
performance mobile travel guides for iPhone and Android that are distributed on the Apple
Store and Google Play. By now over 200 travel guides have been created with this platform.

6. How map2app Works, part 1
It is a wizard-like platform with professional results.
No coding experience is required. A user can create a mobile
travel guide in a few hours that looks great and works
smoothly
Map2app provides an earth friendly expandable set of travel guides as an alternative to the
mass of paper ones that usually provide guides and orientation. The apps are automatically
generated by the platform. So you the author just have to upload your content (such as
locations with photos, stories, events) to your account on their production website, and the
wheels of the platform do the rest, and it launches on your mobile phone. So the cost of
creating an app, and technical skills to do it, is really low, much less than making a website,
allowing any kind of user to create a professional-looking mobile solution.

7. Angel Island
”Angel Island is something of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily
lives for most Bay Area residents” Ava Roy, WePlayers and Amy Brees, CSP
In this paper Pietro and I present a mobile application that we created using the map2app
platform for a particular cultural heritage location – Angel Island.

8. Angel Island
”Angel Island is something of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily
lives for most Bay Area residents” Ava Roy, WePlayers and Amy Brees, CSP
Angel Island is the biggest island in the San Francisco Bay. It is currently a California State
Park and is a popular destination for visitors to San Francisco and local residents. The only
people who live here are park staff. I love the description of Angel Island that it “is something
of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily lives for most Bay Area residents” (Ava Roy,
WePlayers and Angel Brees, AI State Park Superintendent). Seen but not seen

9. US Military
on Angel
Island
Civil War Era
click The military occupation began with defensive big guns pointing west in the Civil War,
changing to garrisons that catered increasingly for preparing soldiers for foreign wars, click
Spanish-American War,click and the WW1 and WW 2. Parallel with preparing soldiers to go
west was controlling the immigrants entering the US from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island
of the West. click The Immigration Station and the military were all gone by 1945. click After
a little blip of military renewal in the form of Nike Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s,
the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a State Park.

10. US Military
on Angel
Island
SpanishAmerican War
Visitors picnic, bike and hike here exploring the island’s landscape with spectacular views on
San Francisco and its bay. They also explore its buildings from the US military occupation of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. click The military occupation began with defensive big
guns pointing west in the Civil War, changing to garrisons that catered increasingly for
preparing soldiers for foreign wars, click Spanish-American War,click and the WW1 and WW 2.
Parallel with preparing soldiers to go west was controlling the immigrants entering the US
from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island of the West. click The Immigration Station and the
military were all gone by 1945. click After a little blip of military renewal in the form of Nike
Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s, the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a
State Park.

11. US Military
on Angel
Island
World War 1
and 2
The garrisons were greatly enlarged to cater for the employment and deployment of soldiers
in the WW1 and WW 2. Parallel with preparing soldiers to go west was controlling the
immigrants entering the US from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island of the West.

12. US Military
on Angel
Island
Cold War
1950-60
The Immigration Station and the military were all gone by 1945. There was a little blip of
military renewal in the form of Nike Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s.

13. US Military
on Angel
Island
Immigration Memorial
Visitors Center
East Garrison Center
Reenactment Center
eenactment Center
In 1967 the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a State Park.Now visitors picnic, bike
and hike here exploring the island’s landscape with spectacular views on San Francisco and
its bay. They also explore its mosaic of buildings - mostly ruined - from the US military
occupation and US Immigration Service of the island.

14. WePlayers: Angel Island
Odyssey App, 2012
We Players facilitated an intimate experience of Angel Island and its diverse histories
through their island-wide, interactive performance adventure of The Odyssey on
weekends, May 12 – July 1, 2012
My first app for Angel Island was created as a guide for the audience of a roving performance
of the Odyssey, by a local Bay Area theater company called WePlayers in summer 2012. I
volunteered as part of the production crew (entirely another story) and it occurred to me that
the audience experience could be greatly enhanced by a companion that told them about
where they were, what they were watching, how far to walk, where the nearest toilets were
and when they should eat during the 5 hours of performance as they walked around Angel
Island.

15. Angel Island Interpretation
Master Plan Plan
Task 1.3.1.c: Plan and develop self-guided interpretive
content that can be used on personal devices
As I developed the second Angel Island app, Angel Island Mobile, during the fall of 2012, the
California State Parks and their community development partner the Angel Island Conservancy
published the Angel Island Interpretation Master Plan. click I am hoping that I can interest
them in giving their blessing and branding to Angel Island Mobile, since it seems to fulfill the
need for self-guided interpretive content on personal devices, planned in Task 1.3.1.c.

16. The Angel Island Mobile App
Focus on History of
Angel Island:
buildings, stories,
performances
download the app
start
exploring
The Angel Island Odyssey app was adapted for Angel Island Mobile - an app built to enhance
the experience of all visitors to the Angel Island park itself with “now and then” photos,
videos, audio and stories that engage visitors in the history of the places as they explore the
island.
click The visitor downloads the app before, during or after their visit. Once downloaded, its
content remains on the phone and does not have to be downloaded again. click Then the
visitor can explore the island at their own pace and in their own direction. click On the island,
only active GPS on the phone is needed to track the location of the user (no cellular activity is
needed which is bad on AI). click Once at their destination, the visitor can look at
documentation, or historic photographs to see, for example, here how many of the original
buildings have become archaeological (disappeared).
Our argument to the California State Parks and Angel Island Conservancy is that its potential
benefits include increasing visits and especially repeat visits, and the international visibility
and attraction that significantly supplements the park’s various websites even before the visit.

17. Find How-to Tutorials at
http://www.map2app.com/en/support/tutorials
map2app and Cultural Heritage Places
Such apps as Angel Island Mobile can act as interpretive platforms for tangible, invisible, and
intangible heritage, and can be created inexpensively by interpreters and stewards. Excellent
examples already exist for many historic sites in Europe, and one is about to be launched for
the Russian fort itself of the Fort Ross State Park. I believe the potential value and scope for
the creation of such guides, not only for heritage places but also archaeological sites, is
enormous.
Cultural Heritage stewards, Archaeologists and Museum Professionals can access the
Map2App platform for free as authors; you can create your own categories (restaurants,
parks, museums...anything you want) and you can create - or import - your places, events
and stories, including media files such as images, videos and audios. The scale can be very
small - a house, or very large - a whole city. It can be thematic, as with our historical focus
for Angel Island Mobile.
Once the content is all set you can export it. It works like magic! You get a beautiful guide for
iphone and android that is a companion for visitors as self-guided explorers, or - as with
Odyssey - followers of a large group - who might get left behind..

18. Future Directions: Community
Feedback - integrating Mukurtu Mobile
Benefits for Angel
Island Mobile App
and AISP
MUKURTU
Mobile
CoDA
•Community
engagement
•User Contribution
•Enrichened metadata
•Enrichened content
•Digital preservation
•A better app and a
better park
Community of Users
You have now heard something about Mukurtu and Mukurtu mobile, and its focus on the
creation of rich media collections by communities and individuals, with filtering of access as
defined by traditional knowledge or other values. The aim of Mukurtu CMS is to make it easy
for the user to create metadata for their collections that will ensure reliable delivery and
longterm preservation of the media (http://www.mukurtu.org/). Map2App does not do this.
You have heard what Map2App does with its ease of creating mobile apps for exploring and
navigating places at whatever resolution. What the Center for Digital Archaeology now
proposes is to bring these two platforms together in a partnership that will expand the
possibilities of both.
Such a partnership will be of great benefit to the Angel Island Mobile App as well as the Angel
Island State Park and its visitors:
It will engage the local community and visitors, allowing them to seamlessly contribute to the
points of interest, stories, and events that are exhibited on Angel Island
It will enrichen the content at the same time as giving it richer metadata, leading to its longterm preservation ........In other words the benefit will be a better app and a better park

19. Videos of Angel Island Mobile
A fun trailer/teaser for Angel
Island Mobile at
http://vimeo.com/62500787
(password: angel)
A short demo of Angel
Island Mobile at
http://vimeo.com/
62590847
(password:angel)

20. Thank you
•My CoDA Colleagues
•map2app colleagues
•Mukurtu colleagues
•Ava Roy and the inspirational WePlayers
•Amy Brees, superintendent of Angel Island
State Park
•Steve Mills and Michael Ashley: the original
Remediated Places team at Çatalhöyük
•and all those unknowing guinea-pig users of
the Angel Island Odyssey app