Journey –

I recall the location, day and time of this app idea because since that day, every time I get in my car and drove for any distance beyond our local grocery store, I was curious, intrigued and wanted to know more about what was around me …

It was June 1st, 2021. We’d just finished hiking the Sequoia Grove in Yosemite and were making the long drive south to LA. Along the way, we passed countless lakes, crossed winding rivers, and drove through the Dole planting fields in Stratford. The whole time, I found myself wondering: what landmarks are we passing? What history happened here? What makes this place unique? The kids kept asking “What’s that?” and “What’s this called?”—and I had nothing to offer but guesses.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Necessity is the mother of invention …

After some market research (i.e. Googling) I came across multiple disperate solutions, but none that really did what I wanted – which was “I am (driving/walking/cycling) down a (path/trail/street) what is actually around me right now?”

I wanted something to be shared with me: What is that large tower in front of me? What river did we cross? What is the mountain range on the horizon? Who originally colonized this area? What is this town known for? And the curiosity goes on. The focus was on me being able to continue to move and enjoy the sights and sounds, having these details shared with me in a natural sounding voice, not to distract from the safety of driving, walking or cycling toward my destination.

A couple of solutions in this space do exist:

Google Maps – Probably has many of the Points of Interest, but does not share the insights behind them. It also includes too many POIs which are not relevant.
Wiki – Once you find the POI you are curious about, you could use a tool like Wikipedia to learn about it. Difficult while driving or moving.
Autio (HereHere originally) – This is probably the closest solution, it does something similar, but the POI’s are static, meaning they are preconfigured in the app, have beautiful narration (Celebs) but what if I am off the beaten path where their stories have not been curated?
History Here – (from the History Channel) Shows historical landmarks and facts around you. Text-based rather than audio.
VoiceMap – GPS-based audio tours curated by locals and historians. More like city tours than background discovery.
Roadtrippers – Lets users plan routes and see attractions, restaurants, and history-based POIs. Focuses more on planning than live narration.
Field Trip (discontinued) – Google’s Niantic project; popped up facts and suggestions near your location. Your idea resembles this one.

Due to some of the gaps I decided to ideate on a app which would offer the following:

While driving on any route/trail/path, an app would dynamically use your GPS coordinates to find a list of categorically relevant to you – points of interest. Categories could include: Landmarks, Companies, Historical Sites, Events, Sports, Music, Geology or Culture.
The app would display these Points of Interest on a map within the geofenced radius and identify them. The faster you are moving, the greater the POI radius, and vice versa.
The app would then provide a short lesson/insight on each of these POI’s dynamically generated in a story form.
You could read the story, or have it narrated to you.

Shortly after this trip, I put “pen to paper” and started to tinker with designs and build out the idea. I unfortunately did not get very far due to work and other commitments, but thanks to technologies like coding agents, and LLM’s, over the Christmas break, I made enough progress to bring the app into a POC state.

I am still not certain if I plan to publish the app on the App Store. I have a small concern about API costs (the app uses Claude for story generation, Google Places API for POI’s and Amazon Polly for Text to Speech) – which could get expensive. Like all my apps, solutions I share, I passionately hate monetization schemes, and would rather not publish than have to charge, and due to this, I am in a dilemma.

Some early mockups/drafts/starting point:

And here is where the app is today …