Tours: Is that the Portland Art Museum in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

You’re the cultured type aren’t you? I know you are. You like to take in a concert or a show every once in awhile. Maybe swing by a museum or two.

But in so doing, you often have to go through a technological time warp. Donning a Walkman from 1983 that walks you through the exhibits and pressing buttons on archaic wall-mounted video screens. All while you’ve got perfectly good technology sitting right in your pocket. It’s not right.

What if you could tour the museum the way you wanted—with that iPhone you’re carrying anyway? Now you can. With the Tours app from Portland-based Spotlight Mobile.

Tours provides an affordable platform that enables museums to bring their tour content to the iPhone, supplying visitors with information, interactive maps, and rich museum walkthroughs featuring audio and video.

Each Tours-based app is associated with a specific venue. And one of the first museums on board happens to be our very own Portland Art Museum.

With ToursApp, the Portland Art Museum is finally able to control their tour and it couldn’t be easier. Featuring their self-produced “Conversations about Art” videos, the museum continues to add content to the tour every day. Using our online editor, the museum can post daily events and special announcements at a moment’s notice. The tour makes use of our location-awareness platform, caching system, slideshow viewer, map engine, keypad, and video player.

I’ve been mucking with the app a little and I can already confirm that it’s about a thousand times better than struggling with paper maps and traditional audio devices. The addition of video is also a great feature that gets you away from the world of pressing a button on a wall—only to have a kid walk up and press it again. And again. And again.

If you’re an iPhone user, do yourself a favor and grab the Portland Art Museum app before your next visit. I hear they have a Raphael.

To test drive the Tours app, download Portland Art Museum from the App Store. For more on the platform, visit Tours.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy