Wherehoo and Periscope: a time & place server and tangible browser for the real world

Abstract

Periscope is a browsing device for exploring Internet-based representations of the physical world along time and location axes. By manipulating a digitally-augmented view camera, users find media and web pages "located" at the real places they represent, relative to the current time, the real-world location of the Periscope device, and the on-camera controls for range, search radius and time window. Periscope's world view comes from queries of the Wherehoo server, a time-and-place storage system. Wherehoo supports embedded systems, human-exploration-assisting software agents, and other time- and location-based systems that query the physical world or record temporally- and spatially-situated data for use by others.