Dickensian London App

Wrote Randy Kennedy in a December 9 New York Times story, "A tourism app that evokes slums, starveling waifs, child labor, pickpockets, brutal jails and gallows might not be everyone's idea of a good way to promote their city’s past."

"But for Charles Dickens fanatics — who began Friday to flock to the Museum of London's exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth on Feb. 7, 1812 — it will undoubtedly be Dickensian in the best sense of the word."

"The museum's app, designed for iPhones and iPads, uses illustrations, voiceovers and an overlay on the Google map of London to show the streets as they were in the 1860s."

"It relies mostly on Dickens’s 1836 series of short pieces, 'Sketches of Boz,' about life in London, with illustrated extracts from more famous works like 'Bleak House' and 'Oliver Twist,' to lead users through a digitized recreation of the city Dickens called his 'magic lantern.'"

Free, the way we like it.