Local Square Advisor

Local Square Advisor is a social locative media visualization for an urban screen. It shows local knowledge that is available through Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram, bringing it back to the physical space. Informative tips and messages will be shown at relevant times, creating an alternative, crowdsourced “guide” of the Leidseplein area. The concept has been specifically designed for flexibility so it can be adapted to other screens and locations in the future. This has been achieved by splitting the application into a back-end and front-end. The back-end gathers data through APIs, normalizes the data, links it to venues in the area and rates it on relevance. The front-end requests data from the back-end, and injects this dynamic data into a flash animation. The flash animation is a map, showing the local area with a route to the venue, and a panel showing the tip or tweet and other relevant metadata.