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Rocking All Over The World crowdsources rock history
Rocking All Over the World is a free app for iPhone and iPad that asks you to help crowdsource rock history. Everybody has their own experiences, memories, and pictures from events they've attended. This app asks everyone to share those things to create a map showing where so many great things happened. Rocking All Over the World requires iOS 5.1 and up. The app presents you an interactive map upon which are pins where events have occurred in the past. For example, when I checked Boston I discovered that there had been a Led Zeppelin riot there. I then tapped on it to read what happened (I leave this as an exercise for the reader). The map behaves exactly as you'd expect so you can move around the world and see what is out there. You can also search, but only by items already in the database. You can't use the search to find a specific place (for example, Hurd and West Shore Rd in Bethel, NY) so if you want to place a pin at a specific location, it may take a bit of work to get there. Once you have your location, you can drop a pin there, tap on the text that appears above it, and begin entering your information. The process is quite simple though it does require a connection to your Facebook account in order to upload images or submit entries. When I tried to submit an entry for Woodstock, I told it that it could not post to Facebook for me and then my submission went into an endless spinner. Whether my denying posting privileges is the cause I do not know. Alas, Woodstock is still not in the database. And probably rightly so. The intent of this app is for people to share their own experiences. I was an one year old when Woodstock happened, so I'm not the best person to create that entry. I like the concept of the app and may pull it out from time to time as I travel just to see what I might be near. I wonder how many people have enough events to share to make this an app they use a lot versus one they look at once in a blue moon when they remember it exists or stumble upon it in whatever folder it is in. But I hope it does get used. I think it would be a lot of fun to open up Rocking All Over the World and see the shared experiences of lots of people.
