Explorer vs Howcomet

Download Explorer, the Museum’s free mobile app! Get a map, turn-by-turn directions to exhibits and amenities, customized recommendations for what to see, and more!    “A great aid to anyone seeing the museum for the first or 40th time.” - The New York Times   Available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Explorer is automatically set to the language of your device.   Map and Turn-by-Turn Directions Get directions to exhibits and amenities, including shortest and accessible routes.   Get Recommendations for What to See Explorer recommends exhibits based on interests you select—and sorts them by how close they are to your location.   Learn More About the Museum’s Exhibits Go behind the scenes and dive deeper with videos, fun quizzes, and more.   Find the Nearest Restroom Explorer provides you the shortest route to restrooms, shops, exits, and more. How does Explorer know where you are? The Museum has placed more than 700 Bluetooth beacons throughout its 45 permanent halls. These tiny beacons give off signals that your phone can detect (when Bluetooth is enabled). Your phone calculates your position based on detecting three of these beacons simultaneously. This triangulation is not always perfect, especially in certain areas like large, multi-level halls, meandering walkways, or stairwells. Your phone should be able to detect the hall that you are in and provide turn-by-turn directions, but sometimes the “blue dot” is not exactly in the right place. In some rare cases it will even be missing. Moving to another area and waiting a few moments will usually fix the issue. The Museum’s free AMNH-GUEST Wi-Fi also varies in strength throughout the complex. Certain materials and large exhibits (i.e. the Blue Whale) either absorb or reflect the radio signals used by Wi-Fi, further complicating this technology. If you experience difficulty connecting to Wi-Fi in a particular part of the Museum, you can usually fix the issue by moving a short distance away.   We’d Love to Hear From You! Your feedback is important and will help us improve your Museum experience. Email explorer@amnh.org.   Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies

Kids ask about a hundred things a day. Howcomet is somewhere to put them. The kid a question — typed, or held down and spoken out loud. They get an answer written for their age, not a page of search results. Then Howcomet asks them one question back. Anyone can hand a child an answer. Getting it back in their own words is what makes them really learn something. Every question they work through becomes a star. The stars form a sky they can look at — a real record of what they have understood. Stars fade if they are left alone. Coming back to a faded one is worth more than practicing something they already know, so Howcomet quietly nudges them towards the things they are forgetting. That is the same idea behind flashcards and revision timetables, without a child ever having to know it. When kids finishing a question, they earns stardust. Parents set what stardust is worth: half an hour later at bedtime, a trip to the park, the LEGO set. Howcomet never takes a payment for any of it and never delivers anything. The child asks, parents decide and hand it over. It is a promise between the child and parents, and the app just keeps count. For parents, they have their own page, on their own device, shows what their kids have been curious about this week and which stars are fading — which is usually the better dinner-table question. The parents set the rewards and the prices. Kids can also suggest one, but only the parents can put a price on it. Every question is screened before it is answered. If we refuse one, the parents are told the same day. No adverts. No third-party trackers or analytics. Nothing is sold to anyone. Child's questions are never used to train AI models. There is no way for a child to message another child, post anything publicly, or be contacted by a stranger. There are no social features at all, by design. A grown-up sets the account up from an emailed link on their own device, and nothing works until they have finished the setup. Privacy policy: https://howcomet.com/privacy Terms of use: https://howcomet.com/terms