A few Armenian IT programmers have developed a program called 360 Stories, which enables making a virtual tour around Armenia. The program includes almost 120 tourist places in Armenia that are seen on the maps provided by «Google» company. People can make a “virtual walk” and when visiting Armenia and make a real tour, they can share their stories through the program. In «360 Stories», there are already 4,000 stories, most of which are written by the authors.
Co-founder of the program, Albert Poghosyan
In the conversation with Aravot, co-founder of the 360 Stories, Albert Poghosyan, noted that the program was elaborated in 3 years. “In the beginning, there were just the streets of Yerevan, but after a couple of places. Then, slowly by slowly we changed to a completely new website and wrote stories. At the time, the whole Armenia was included in the program, and earlier, it was only the center of the city. Later, we added new functions and other interesting things. Last year, he developed the mobile app and virtual reality.”
Many different people on different times have worked on «360 Stories», now, we are 8 of us. Prior to developing the program, in Albert Poghosyan’s words, they realized that virtual reality is a future. And in the very near future, even Facebook will be in the virtual reality. “We knew that what is going on, what is changing does not happen so quickly and we can manage preparing a quality thing. First of all, we wanted to show Armenian in a very high quality. The Ministry of Culture of Armenia helped the programmers in the development of 360 Stories. “They supported us to develop the 360armenia.com website. They have also helped us to take the photos of different places of Armenia. The cooperation will continue in the future. We have photographed hundreds tourist sights,” says Albert Poghosyan. Now, the authors do not expect revenues for the program. They want to make money after leaving for Europe. Albert Poghosyan noted that the program will include other cities too. “Now, we are working on the city of Cologne, Germany.”
The program has an e-site: www.360stories.am. There is also a mobile app for the iOS operating system. As said by the co-founder of 360 Stories, now they are working on the program for the Android system. “We had more experience in iOS system, therefore, we decided first to issue for the iOS system. The program downloads the whole content from the Internet, therefore, there is no difference: iOS or Android”. Referring to uploads, Albert Poghosyan said that although the program is released 2 weeks ago, but there are already 8500 uploads. “But the visit to the website is much bigger. We have approximately 100,000 visitors per month. There are 3000 registered users. The uploads are mostly from abroad because we do not disseminate here. Our task is the tourists and we also distribute «Cardboard» on free.”
A Cardboard is a cardboard box consisted of two lenses that looks like eyeglasses. It was also elaborated by the «360 Stories» programmers. “When you put the phone into it, the work of the lenses allows you to think that you have appeared in this image. This is the virtual reality. We have a special photographing device for such images with 360-degree, which enables us to take photos from high places,” says Albert Poghosyan.
Ashot ISRAELYAN
Photos by Albert Poghosyan’s Facebook page
