The years that followed 9/11 brought books and DVDs memorializing the tragedy; now the iPad and iPhone are proving themselves as powerful interactive tools serving in the same mission.
It's not finished yet, but the National 9/11 Memorial at the site of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan promises to provide an emotionally wrenching experience. With part of the memorial scheduled to open to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks, the time is right for iPhone/iPad apps exploring the Memorial.
There are two official National 9/11 Memorial iPhone apps – the "Explore 9/11 Memorial" with a blue "9/11 Memorial" icon, and the "9/11 Memorial Guide" with a white icon – and one unofficial iPad historical app, "The 9/11 Memorial: Past, Present and Future," constructed with aid from the National 9/11 Memorial folks. All three are free.
Documentary filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum, released the film "7 Days in September" in 2002, but he told us that, in 2006, he revisited the subject. "I kept feeling like I'd only told half the story. I'd created the world's largest archive of 9/11 videos, but the story of how the country and the site re-built was important, maybe more important."
He donated the educational rights to the footage to the 9/11 Memorial, but began work on his website, and on the iPad app, 9/11 Memorial: Past, Present and Future, which we demonstrate in the above video.
Speaking of points of view, another app developer decided that the best starting point to talk about 9/11 was to have people take pictures in and around Ground Zero, and then add in the ghostly rendering of the Twin Towers. The app, 110 Stories, is currently on iPhone but soon to be released on Android. When you point the phone's camera at the part of the New York skyline where the World Trade Center would be, they appear, with the correct proportional dimensions.
"I'm a life long New Yorker, in love with the city skyline and obsessed with the lost iconography of the Twin Towers," says developer Brian August, on his website.
But it's not just a photographic trick: Once you take a picture, the app requests that you upload your story, so that you can share in the memorialization of the lost buildings, and the greater tragedy of which they are emblems.
In order to offer his app for free, August reached out to crowdsourced funding community Kickstarter, and in three weeks raised nearly $28,000, enough to cover the development costs.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum also has an iPhone app, created last year but updated for the 10th anniversary, called Explore 9/11. Its main purpose is to guide users on a tour of Ground Zero, providing at each stop on the walk a voice and photo explanation of the tragic events. It also provides a timeline of the events, and a social feature for users to share images.