Virtual archaeology tours over the internet with the Nintendo Wii.

Virtual archaeology dig tours over the internet with the Nintendo Wii.
Ralf Belusa

Topical session: Crowd marketing
What is the aim of the paper?
The aim is to show a very simple way to get more kids and interested persons into archaelogical science without leaving there living room. It shows an easy way to connect a social and human crowd, aswell as bring science and social contacts with the wisdom of crowds together.
Which methods are used or proposed?
The archaeologically interessted person in the living room will use his PC or Nintendo Wii to connect to a www page. This page can be developed in PHP and displays a Wii widget for archaeology. On that internet page, the interested person can see the topics and research of several institutes. The scientist or presenter of the topic can set a date of the internet presentation tour. For example Fri 5pm. On Fri. 5pm. the interessted persons and the presenter will meet on the internet and tour through the interesting topics while surfing the internet. They can discuss and talk about the different topics, surf with the crowd, all without leaving the couch. Also the interested person can virtualy dig in the VR Room with the Wiimotestick. Second step will be the commercial part of it.
What is new?
New is the aspect of using the opera webbrowser Nintendo Wii functionality, to bring new archaeological topics into the livingroom. On the new internet platform, the scientist can set a research topic and tour date for the community of interested users. New is, that the interested users can be scientists or normal internet or Wii-Users. The focus is clearly on the home situated interested person. On that particular date of the web tour, the scientist or presenter will tour with the virtual community in real time, and give real speechs about, for example, pictures, flickr, google earth, archaeological platforms, films, studies. New is also, that the presenter has a real time connection to the people who follow him through the internet. Also the audience has a direct connection to the presenter. Attractive, is that there is no additional implementation necessary. Nearly all parts can be used by standard features of the internet browser nintendo wii functionality with wiimotestick for free movement in the presentation. The additional feature with direct speech can be used by skype for wii. The chat functionality can by used by gabbly.com. Programs like google earth and flickr can be used freely in a non-commercial context by the university or the presenter.