Comment by atourgates

15 hours ago

Ever since I discovered Gypspy nearly a decade ago (now Guidealong https://guidealong.com/) - I've been dreaming of an open source app that'd pull local history from sources like Wikipedia, those roadside historical signs, etc., and narrate as you drive.

https://autio.com/ is similar - but obviously not open source, and more limited.

It seems like it could even tailor itself to what an individual user is interested in, and with AI - could turn more "dry" encyclopedia-type information into more compelling narratives. With some kind of route planning software, you could even pre-plan your trips ahead of time and select the things you're interested in.

Obviously not what you're building, but something related that's been clunking around in the back of my head for a while.

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atourgates

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ml-  14 hours ago

Yeah, that's cool. Currently tangential, but conceptually not something that would be completely out of scope in the end. I'm planning to use machine translations, text-to-speech, and multi modal generative models for accessibility already. There's also an idea for baking in GPS audio tours. Obviously depends on sourcing some quality content first

When you say open source is it so you could self host it, use your "own" models, and curate your own datasets? or some other reasons? I could see a future where a lot of the project could potentially be open sourced and work with any defined geojson API.

  • atourgates  11 hours ago

    Open source was the wrong term (though that would be fine).

    I meant community-sourced. Some kind of community where local "experts" or history enthusiasts could contribute info.

    AKA - invite a local or regional historical society to contribute data for their region, with the benefit that they could then easily generate a regional tour map/route/recommendation.

    • ml-  10 hours ago

      Aha.. yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's probably the best way to catch the more niche and special interest history.