Cell Phone Tours?
There’s a new company, mobiletours.org, that’s providing recorded information about a few of the major DC sites and monuments that you can access from your cell phone as you are walking the Mall.
The informational narrative recordings provide a 2-4 minute overview of the history of 12 monuments or buildings, the people it memorializes or the period in history. Voice recordings with personal accounts and related interviews about to the memorial adds additional color.
Simply dial 800-217-7740 and press the number for the desired site:
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Memorial
- Korean Memorial
- Washington Monument
- WWII Memorial
- Jefferson Memorial
- FDR Memorial
- White House
- U.S. Capitol
- Ford’s Theater
- Arlington Cemetery
- Voice of America
The overview tours are pretty good. For example, at the WW-II Memorial, besides information about the memorial’s construction and symbolism, there’s general information on the Second World War along with a recording of a soldier as he recalls the liberation of Paris, and another from a soldier who was involved in the D-Day invasion of Utah Beach. 
The FDR Memorial includes a brief history of the President, snippets of various FDR’s speeches including the Day in Infamy speech, and the radio report announcing the surrender of Germany.
You are required to listen to a brief 15-second advertisement after you make your selection, (mostly from Mall tour operators) and have the opportunity to be automatically connected to the sponsor after the “tour” concludes. You can call back as often as you like as you tour the Mall.
You can also download the MP3 files in advance to your phone from home so you don’t burn your mobile minutes.
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[...] Phillips also has implemented cell phone tours, similar to the one I recently wrote about. Their version, Guide by Cell, lets you use your mobile phone to place a call to a phone [...]