
An app that reads Wikipedia to teach you about cities you’re driving through - ax00x
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/9/17549668/app-wikipedia-location-facts
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bbrian
I use [http://wikimapia.org/](http://wikimapia.org/) when traveling to find
out about what's around me. Going around the US by train last year I passed a
decommissioned ICBM launch site and a couple of Superfund/nuclear waste sites.
Neat.

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L_226
Shameless self-plug; I recently launched an app to help people discover and
contribute interesting things about the places they go -
[https://www.r3d.city](https://www.r3d.city). Feedback greatly appreciated!

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mcjiggerlog
It seems like there's a gap for a mapping application focussed around
discovery. Google maps and the like expect you to know what you are looking
for. I want an application that will show me what interesting towns, villages,
churches, museums, beaches etc. there are around me whilst travelling.

Does anyone know if something like this already exists?

I have some ideas for how I would implement it myself but I thought I'd check
what else is already out there.

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joshumax
You might want to check out Niantic's (the same people who made Ingress) app
called Field Trip[1]. It seems to fulfill a lot of what you're asking for.

1:
[https://www.fieldtripper.com/m/index.html](https://www.fieldtripper.com/m/index.html)

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ravenstine
A friend of mine and I, while on a road trip, thought it'd be cool if there
was an app like the one described that tells you about what's grown in the
fields and orchards you drive through out in the country. I decided against
making it after reading articles about how there are actual orchard robbers
and people who steal millions of dollars worth of almonds; I don't want to
make it easier for criminals. But I still kind of hope someone else makes it
because I'd enjoy it.

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zulln
How do you plan to get the data? Assuming you took the idea that far.

Sounds interesting indeed, and I have not thought about it for long, but I
doubt there is any public official database for it?

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bmurray7jhu
Find Wikipedia articles near your location:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby)

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cramforce
App author here: Added this as an additional data source for the app.

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connelld
This looks neat. I've been working on something similar,
([https://www.drivehighlights.com/](https://www.drivehighlights.com/)) after
wanting something like this on a road trip with my family. It's still a work
in progress and only US locations right now, but I'm working to add new types
of locations.

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reustle
I'm currently on a trip around the world by train and would love to use this.
Currently 33 countries and 3.5 years in.

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ycombinete
Hey, as someone who would love to do such a thing, I've often wondered,
outside of simply being wealthy beyond my imagination, or working while
traveling, how does someone fund such a trip?

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jkeat
Love seeing an app built on Glitch [1] getting press coverage from somewhere
as big as The Verge!

As an American visiting Austria, I sympathize with the Vienna bug. Nearly
walked to Virginia multiple times due to a miscommunication with Google Maps
;)

[https://glitch.com/](https://glitch.com/)

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zedderled
This is a bit off topic but is there an app that takes you to your destination
with the most scenic routes? Currently, Waze and Google Maps gives me the
route with the least traffic but one time I took a Waze route through VA which
was absolutely gorgeous. The only way I can make this happen is taking the
opposite of the GPS and then letting it guide me through the backways.

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dolzenko
I want the same for street names I'm driving, is this available? E.g. short
bio of the personality the street is named for. Given the track is known it
can even select longer/shorter versions depending on how long you're going to
stay on the given street :)

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rockostrich
Seems like a cool, simple web app. The voice isn't great though. I would think
that it's pretty easy to have a nicer computer generated voice nowadays, but
I've never built something that needed to do text to speech so maybe not.

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cramforce
Author of the app here: The voice is whatever your browser on your device uses
by default for speech synthesis. E.g. on an iPhone it may be Siri's default,
on other platforms it is a different voice.

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kaybe
Are you checking for spoken article coverage? There are not a lot, sadly, but
some places are covered.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spoken_articles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spoken_articles)

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xrmagnum
This reminded me of Sheldon hacking a GPS (The Big Bang Theory)
[https://youtu.be/WreaEJDyk7M?t=50s](https://youtu.be/WreaEJDyk7M?t=50s)

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frafra
Would it possible to choose a different language? Edit: someone else already
open a issue (see issue no. #8)

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iamaelephant
The voice is absolutely hideous on MacOS, but very listenable on Android.

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systoll
The worst voice is built into chrome for desktop. Other Mac browsers use the
system voice, which is [by default] reasonable.

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sabbakeynejad
Really nice idea. Some friends and I were driving to Stonehenge a few weeks, I
got my mate to read me the whole Wikipedia entry on Stonehenge as we were
driving there. You can test this idea manually with friends and find out what
the most interesting points of the article are and build that into the app.

