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An startup called PIVOT is building an intriguing augmented reality app that looks at physical locations' history, allowing users to travel through time with the help of historical images, audio and video. They are presented in the form of geo-mapped locations on a smartphone or tablet, and can also be accessed when in a particular location. The founding couple Asma Jaber and Sami Jitan are Palestinian Americans were awarded the $25,000 grand prize at Harvard Innovation Lab’s 2014 Entrepreneurship Challenge, and plan to launch in the areas of Palestine, Israel and Cambridge, and then move to more locations accross the world.

Technology

PIVOT will start by utilizing historical archives before moving to a heavily moderated crowdsourcing mechanism, which they want to base on best practices of determining provenance as set by institutions like the Library of Congress and Institute of Palestine Studies. They are working with the Institute of Palestine Studies and other reputable organizations to insure the highest quality in historical and cultural preservation, and are partnering with Zochrot, owner of the iNakba app, who has offered to share their database.

Afterwards, they are looking into “shoe-box archiving“ ,which will help mobilize communities to record their own history, to potentially build and own PIVOT tours of entire neighborhoods, towns, or cities.

PIVOT works with Palestinan developers managed by iConnect, app and CMS developers in Ramallah and Chicago, and freelance designers in Jordan. Soon, they will want testers to use the app in the upcoming beta phase.

Story

Jaber and Jitan met on Nakba Day, held up at the border between Palestine and Jordan by border guards because of their Palestinian identities and American passports. This was also the exact location where Asma’s father, Samir Yousef Jaber, was banished from Palestine decades ago.

Fast forward a few months, and Asma’s father dies at 66. The months that followed were difficult for her, however, she became inspired to preserve her father’s heritage and her own. She later visited Historic Palestine, yet felt lost there. Without her father she was unable to appreciate the culture and history that was all around her.

Jaber explained that after her father passed away, she felt a necessity to keep his memory and that of his home country alive. Jitan was drawn in by Asma’s stories and photographs, which encouraged them to develop the idea for PIVOT. Jaber and Jitan decided to create PIVOT, born out of their shared passion for history.

Kickstarter campaign

Jaber and Jitan have taken to Kickstarter to fund their project. Having set their goal at $30,000, they have raised about $17,500 to date with the project ending on March 29th.
The money raised will be used to fund augmented reality and virtual tour functions of the mobile app and web-dashboard, which “allows users to upload multimedia and information to a Google Maps API, which feeds directly into the mobile app,” as written on their Kickstarter page. They also plan to find and hire more staff to help in managing their immense database of images.

Who Wins Here?

People will be able to hold their smartphones and tablets in front of landmarks and significant historical locations, swipe, and view the same location from different time periods. Can you imagine historical media spreading as fast as tourists around the world?
This can become a grand leap for Institutions, tour operators, and historians who are expected to have immense ability in narrating meaningful, verified history, and tours. How this aspect of the app will be monetized is still under evaluation for now...

While there are a lot of different tourism and navigation apps out there, PIVOT stands out with its shoe-box archiving, augmented reality, and virtual reality tour modules. It can transform the way people all over the globe experience and preserve culture, history, and heritage. If you wish to contribute, you can help them complete their funding through the Kickstarter campaign by sharing their story or video, and/or pledge some funds.

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