When the brand new monsoon website of Kerala tourism, http://when-it-rains.com pops up, don’t rush your hands towards the mouse to flip pages. All you need to do is just to wave your hand and the page changes automatically.
Kerala tourism department which has never left any stone unturned when it comes to undertaking aggressive media campaigns, hosted the new website as part of their monsoon campaign. The site which was launched a month ago has become an instant hit and has garnered more than 12,000 likes on Facebook. “The website is completely gesture-controlled. The idea is simple. You do not have to use mouse or key pad. The page flips according to the movement of the hands. What you have to do is to move your hands in the direction you want to flip the page,” said Hari Kishore, Director, Kerala Tourism Department.
The official said that the new page can now be viewed only in ‘Google Chrome’. “It can be easily managed with a webcam for you have to move your hands in front of it,” he said. The new website was launched to invoke the participation of the people in developing tourism in the state. The website mostly consists of rain photographs. “The photographs are clicked by amateurs. They would send the photographs to us and we select the best in the lot and upload it in the site. Our main intention is to utilise the social networking site completely,” he said.
Though there are many companies which are using this technology, the tourism department has adopted it for the first time. The idea was initiated by Rani George, Former Director, Kerala Tourism Department. “I came to know about this technology when the advertising agency contacted me and explained about it. It looked very curious and interesting, hence I thought of commissioning a website with the technology,” she said.
The brand new website was developed by Stark Communications.