Liberty guide is an innovative new tourist guide for visiting heritage sights using a mobile phone and headset. Satellite tracking allows you to walk around and pick up a soundtrack connected to the spot you are in. No need to follow a specific route, hence the liberty element. Atmospheric sound effects such as a horse and carriage passing, bees buzzing in a monastery garden or music and conversations between historical characters tell you about the history of the place.

It's like being inside a film. You can see where you're at and get additional information at any time on your phone. The scenarios and soundtracks have been recorded by professional actors and sound teams. Liberty guide is being tested in the Medieval City of Le Mans and at the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud in Western France.

Find out more at the Liberty guide website and check out these articles online at the Springwise trendspotting website and PSFK.

How to describe the thrill that I feel when around the corner we come face to face with this magical giant of the jungle eating up the tarmac of Nantes historical dockland island on the Loire ? I’m pretty sure I saw him wink at us.

François Delarozière et Pierre Orefice, the talented duo behind the mechanical prowess of France’s hottest street theatre company, the Royal de Luxe, have struck again (check out the giant spider over Liverpool not so long ago). The elephant seems to be breathing heavily with the effort of each step.

In true Jules Verne style (another of this city's famously creative inhabitants), the two have been given a chance to fulfil their wildest dreams with the Les Machines de l’Ile. A massive workshop and exhibition space, housed in Nantes’ former boatyards, has become the base for projects including the Heron tree, a vast architectural sculpture for the city and the European Centre for Flight Simulation. There are also some rather more profound exhibits, including a weird and wonderful menagerie of deep-sea creatures destined to revolve on a giant multi-tiered carousel. All in working order of course!

I love to visit the smaller countryside museums of France. As often as not there is something for everyone and that is really what Joseph Denais had in mind when he opened up his museum here in the early 1900s.

He began his collection as a boy of 15 after discovering that an old coin he had been given by a friend dated from the 1st century of the Roman Empire. From then on, he began amassing treasures, with a marked preference for curiosities with a story. He bought none of the objects you can see on show in the museum today. They were all gifts from people who understood his passion. From the exotic (Eygptian mummies) to the mundane (kitchen utensils), his collection is like the entries in an encyclopaedia. As a well-travelled journalist and writer, he wanted to create a place where his fellow citizens could get a taste of the wider world and all its marvels. Natural history, the arts, archaeology, ethnography and local history and more are covered in this giant cabinet of curiosities. Curiouser and curioser...