Today’s NYTimes includes a brief report about a Charles Dickens app from the Museum of London, produced for the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth, which will be on Feb. 7, 2012. Sam Antonacio has been working on something similar as a way to experience Lowell’s history, with the help of the Deshpande Foundation’s Merrimack Valley Sandbox.

Lowell will have a vast array of Dickens events in 2012, including a museum exhibit at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum and activities throughout the city from late March through October. On top of Charles’s 200th birthday, next year is the 170th anniversary of Dickens’ day-trip to Lowell on Feb. 3, 1842, which he famously wrote about in his book “American Notes.”