Manhattan Story Mashup is an urban game (research can be fun), taking place on September 23rd 2006 in the streets of Manhattan, New York City.

During the event, approximately 250 players (join us, you can be one) will move around Manhattan, taking photos which match a given target. Targets are words from stories, written by visitors on the game web site while the game goes on. The resulting illustrated stories will be shown on large public signs in Times Square and on the game web site (http://storymashup.org/).

Manhattan Story Mashup has been organized by SensorPlanet, a Nokia Research Center -initiated research program focused on large-scale sensor networks. We are interested in combining the physical and the virtual worlds through new ways of sensing. Because so many people regularly carry a mobile phone, mobiles offer the perfect platform for testing our tools and theories. The game merges the virtual and physical world by enabling real-time interaction between participants on the Web and players in Manhattan using state-of-the-art Nokia cameraphones. This NRC game provides Nokia with a great opportunity to showcase its latest technology and to enable real and virtual communities to interact in an innovative and artistic fashion in the form of an urban game.

See:

• http://research.nokia.com/
• http://storymashup.org/

Thanks to the S60 multimedia blog for this tip!