We’ve all been there – you’re in a fascinating foreign city, with decades of art, history and culture all around you…

But it’s all set to the drone of your underpaid tour guide’s monotonous recitation of what the artist was trying to say through his art.

So how much is technology helping change the experience of visiting museums, galleries and other cultural events, beyond the use of those clunky headsets or sticks that vibrate when you get to a strategic point?

Perhaps this is where Geocoded Art steps in – an app that purports to have gathered a database of thousands of famous paintings from around the world and coded the precise locations their canvases depict.

In essence, when you’re walking by a certain location, the app will tell you about the work of art that was conceived there, providing information about the painting, its history and the artist.

So this time, the fact that you’re walking around with your head buried in your phone, it’s not going to be taking away from your location but helping you appreciate it better.

The app, when it is eventually released, works by taking a large catalogue of various types of images, which are geocoded to the artist’s vantage point.

These are then integrated into Google Earth and accessible on location on various smartphones and other devices.

The app will deliver fine art images of your location to your location, on your GPS-enabled smartphone or tablet, so you can explore the painting and the place at the same time.

You can also personalize the app by choosing to be notified when you are in the area of a site that has been the subject of a great painting, or browsing from home, picking the sites you want to see and then planning your excursion.

Another area which has grown in the same vein is the Google Art Project, which allows web surfers to move through 17 of the most prominent art galleries in the world.

It includes the option to look more closely at individual art works, including some that will be digitized so exhaustively that individual paint strokes and hairline cracks in the surface will be visible.

Yet another way to explore some of the world’s landmarks is Google Maps Photo Tours, a new feature allows users to take 3D tours of 15,000 different, well-known landmarks; all of which are highlighted when you follow a special link from Google.

More focused on art itself is Art.sy, part of the Arts Genome Project, which is something unlike anything else.

Art.sy evaluates and compiles what they call the DNA of various pieces of art, such as art-historical movements, subject matter and other formal qualities, which makes for a widespread search function that returns a variety of results that may share these DNA with painting you searched for.

This is just a sample of the wide variety of apps available, but what’s certain is that technology is making fine art more approachable and democratic every day and is introducing new ways to admire art outside of the confines of the museum.

Good or bad for tourists? Let them decide…

NB: This is a guest article by Ariha Setalvad, a writer at mobile and desktop app creator Fueled.

That’s the conundrum that FlightMemory and FlugStatistik, two flight-data websites under common ownership, find themselves in.

The two websites — one in English, largedly geared for the U.S., Canada and Australia, and the other in German, mainly for Germany, Austria and Switzerland — are a joint venture between Heret Informatic Service and Koordinaten. FlugStatistik debuted in late 2005 and its English-language counterpart arrived in April 2007.

For aviation, data and mapping buffs, the websites are designed to enable consumers “to easily keep track of where you have flown and then easily produce maps showing your flight routes,” FlightMemory says. “We’ll also tell you your total time in the air, distance flown and even keep track of aircraft types and airlines.”

But whether @FlightMemory is tweeting about aircraft or @FlugStatistik is tweeting about Flugzeugtypen, Sam Liban, the company’s business development person, says the dual Twitter roles are challenging because of the necessity to tweet about two brands and because  ”applicable content for both parties needs to be translated, duplicated and relinked.”

And, of course, content about U.S. or German airlines, for instance, may be a big bore to the followers of the other Twitter account.

So, for companies rolling out websites in multiple countries, the social media work multiplies and gets much more complicated.

And, if the tweeting for several countries is all sourced in a single country, time zone issues come into play, as well.

Liban says FlightMemory and FlugStatistik have to be aware that prime time for tweeting is spread across Eastern Standard Time, Pacific Standard Time and Central European Time zones.

Liban also perceives differentiated follower behavior and cultural differences for the company’s English language FlightMemory and German language FlugStatistik Twitter accounts.

In general, Liban says, FlightMemory followers tend to be “more open” and “easier to follow and connect” with. In addition, using the FlightMemory Twitter account, the company has found it easier to establish “great connections” with influential aviation bloggers.

Corporations on the English language side of the Twittersphere also seem to be “rather open-minded about Twitter connections,” Liban says.

In contrast, FlugStatistik followers can be a bit “more closed” and tend to follow back only if the fit is just right, Liban says.

And, corporate behavior is different, too.

On the German-language side of the Twittersphere, many companies appear to be more “interested in distributing their content than in interacting with others,” Liban observes.

Today, while FlugStatistik had 2,512 followers and FlightMemory counted 2,088, Liban says the FlightMemory account has been the more successful of the two so far.

Liban says the company has “made great connections” through the FlightMemory Twitter account and opened some new business opportunities, including partnerships.

“Twitter services are better accepted by the user base on FlightMemory,” Liban says.

Still, the company is digging deeper into Twitter, hoping to make some gains across the culture-scape.

Liban says the company just opened two new Twitter accounts, @FlugzeugModelle and @AviationShop.

One is in German, one in English.

Bitte, follow them.