Glossary

Airrative

This is the term I created and started using in April 2009 to communicate my emphasis on the narrative core of the medium's structure -- the basic arcs or threads -- and to create separation from uses that are more like compilations of information or service journalism than stories. It's also meant to clarify that no human detritus is involved, even bar codes or RFID tags. The stories exist only in "the air," published and experienced through GPS and other location-awareness tools, such as Wi-Fi. I'm refining this idea and will publish more about it soon.

Ambient Storytelling

This use of location-based technology seems to put the emphasis on the ambiance around the storytelling waypoint.

Augmented Reality

Overlaps the real world with computer-generated information. This term -- reportedly coined by Boeing researcher Tom Caudell in 1990 -- seems to have inspired at least a couple of the early developers, Layar and Mobilizy, which created Wikitude. AR is also known as Metareality.

Digital Storytelling

A broad label that covers just about any use of mobile technology in the creation of stories. Also known as Mobile Storytelling.

Geojournalism

The prefix "geo" refers to information embedded in source code -- such as HTML, RSS, XML, etc. -- that is connected to standard longitude and latitude coordinates under the World Geodetic System (WGS84, the latest version of the system's coordinate frame that pinpoints location; due to be updated in 2010). Geo often gets combined with other terms to create new labels for opportunities that didn't exist before the public received broad access to the GNSS. Some of these include: Geo-Stories, Geo-Narratives and Geopix.

GNSS -- Global Navigation Satellite Systems, the generic term for systems that allow geo-spatial positioning anywhere in the world, including altitude, latitude and longitude, which can be transmitted to small, hand-held devices.

GPS -- Global Positioning System, a global navigation satellite system developed and operated by the United States, the only fully functioning such system in the world


Interreality

Merges real and virtual worlds to produce new environments. Also known as "Mixed Reality."

Locative Media -- Communication linked to a specific location. Also called Contextual Media, Locative Narrative, Ubimedia (Ubiquitous media) and Place-Based Media.

Location-Based Media -- Multimedia information delivered to mobile devices based upon their locations.

Metareality

Overlaps the real world with computer-generated information. Also called Augmented Reality.

Mixed Reality -- Merges real and virtual worlds to produce new environments, "where physical and digital objects coexist in real time." Also known as "interreality."

Mobile Storytelling

A broad label that covers just about any use of mobile technology in the creation of stories. Also known as Digital Storytelling.

Pervasive Games

Game experiences that cross the real and the virtual worlds. Also called Big Games.

SMS -- Short Message Service, the system that sends and receives text messages

Transmedia Storytelling -- Only a tangential connection to our primary subject here, but often confused for it, transmedia storytelling is more about spreading a tale across the media spectrum, including mobile devices, without all of it contained in any one area. "The Matrix" movie, for example, included three mainstream films, an animated film, a video game, comic books and various other installments in other media, that combined to create the entire story. If you didn't experience the full collection across platforms, you would have difficulty understanding the significance of the scenes in the mainstream films. Also known as crossmedia or "enhanced" storytelling, the latter label of which might cause confusion with "augmented" reality.

Other terms being used:

Air-tagging, spatial computing, optical internet, physical gaming and synthetic environments. If I can find distinguishing traits of any of those, I'll move them into an individual category with an explanation