Just like most other things, tourism has now gone high tech. On Tuesday, the Cambridge, Massachusetts Office for Tourism launched a new website, complete with a downloadable guided audio tour of the city.

Ira Hochman
CTO, Untravel Media
And they had actually been searching for a way to do an electronic tour and mobile tourism for the square and specifically to get people to explore beyond one spot in the center of the square and start moving into the side streets. Michael had connected with them and what we were doing technologically and the concept wise fit with what they wanted to do so the project started. They used our production studio facilities as well as our technology to create beyond the yard.

Untravel Media, a Boston based company, produced the tour that can be downloaded from the website onto a Window's Mobile 5.0 enabled phone, video iPod, or other mp3 player. Home to Harvard, MIT, and a number of historical sites, the office of tourism hopes the experience will highlight the city.

We did a lot of phone calls and told them who we want interviewed and they found some things on their own that were really hidden treasures about the city.

Untravel demonstrated the tours on an iRiver mp3 because the route map shows up on the screen and remains interactive. On some devices, that capability is lost.

While the mobile tour is new to Cambridge, it's not a new offering for Untravel. The company offers several other tours that were created using the company's software.

Which is a product we're putting into beta trials over the next few months and we'll be releasing this summer more widely. And that's a web based application that will allow professionals and amateurs to take their media and offer these tours

Untravel is currently working with the New England Aquarium to produce a tour, but also has a unique idea for mobile tourism

We're also looking into an interesting market of destination weddings and working with destination resorts to provide tours for guests of the destination wedding and both through our software, allowing couples to make remembrances by mixing in their own wedding media into professional tours.

For the IDG News Service, I'm Nick Barber, reporting from Cambridge.