Walking in L.A. (L.A. Stories).

If you were downtown on a recent Sunday and thought you saw people actually walking on 4th Street, you did. A group of programmers, designers and artists have created a virtual walking tour called 34 North 118 West (the area's coordinates).

The tour guide is a tablet computer decked out with a global positioning satellite system unit. Even more incongruous is that the tour doesn't highlight 2003's L.A. but the city as it stood in 1906.

The half-mile amble, aided by an audio-tape tour guide, tries to transform the city to one dominated by turn-of-the-century characters and the railroad industry.

"We don't think of L.A. as loaded with that kind of history," says one of the designers, Jeff Knowlton, who teaches art and programming at University of California, San Diego. "It's got buildings that have been there for 100 years or more. In your car you would never look at the architecture details of these buildings, but by walking you do."

The tours, which depart several times on Sunday afternoons, are free, but Knowlton and his partners designed the project as a proof-of-concept that they plan to market to museums, tourism companies and educators. "We call it location-aware solutions," he said.