Maps.fm: listen a podcast episode about that place on the map | Hacker News Reader

Maps.fm: listen a podcast episode about that place on the map

maps.fm

This is a cool idea.

It reminds me of an idea I had on a road trip once – a Google Maps-like driving directions app that would occasionally announce interesting facts about the places you're driving through. Things like pieces of natural or cultural history, or geology, etc. Would help to get to know the places one is passing through.

I think someone made something similar, so I kinda gave up on it.

Reminds me of that TBBT episode where Sheldon hacks the GPS: https://youtu.be/dCsYBacNfBw?si=CEjA-JgF9zHwL0tV&t=45

Very cool. When I was living in Paris I wanted to do something similar (but without the driving / directions part). I just liked walking randomly in the city and wished someone could tell me about all the interesting little bits of culture and history of the places I strolled past.

Could probably do it with ChatGPT. Take picture of building. Ask what it knows about it. Haven’t tried, but may work for some buildings. No GPS though.

I was thinking of a similar thing when the AirPods came out. When they were new it felt like a nice bridging of the real / virtual worlds when it announced walking directions directly into your ear, or reading arriving messages to you. I thought it would be a cool idea to have some kind of trivia, facts being read to you while you move around. Kinda like AR but more audio-based.

there are some custom content versions, such as Autio, but our thought was to take advantage of all the free podcast episodes (the podcasters love it because it's another form of discovery and their audio plays exactly the same).

Sorta like this? https://4m3ric4.com

What is this? It made me listening to a random Minnesota radio station where people talk about ghosts.

oops, sorry. If you know what it was supposed to be please let us know.

GuideAlong is an app that sort of does this. But it only works on its given routes - not generically everywhere. It's not amazing, but the content is pretty fairly priced.

This is pretty much exactly how I've attempted to make Summer AI app work. If I am missing anything from your vision please let me know!

Oh this is such a cool idea! It looks like there are several episodes by 99pi about my area that I haven’t listened to yet.

I’m unable to successfully navigate the interface on mobile though so I’ll have to try when I’m back to my computer tomorrow. Because I only ever listen to podcasts on my phone it would be nice to have a better mobile interface.

thanks, and yes, the mobile interface needs work...

How are you identifying location? Are you using the Podcasting 2.0 geolocation tags?

For those curious: https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/m...

I keep being surprised at how many good enhancements are part of the Podcasting 2.0 specs.

The <podcast:value> gets (very understandably) a lot of attention.

But <podcast:chapters>, <podcast:trailer> and <podcast:remoteItem> are very usefull as well.

Yes, it's a mix of automated with human checking, which is important at this stage. A map raises the bar on the required accuracy. And yes, using the location:tag idea, with some other additions to the RSS feed.

Reminds me of the hours I used to spend zooming around Google Maps when they had the Wikipedia overlay. I desperately miss that feature!

Both Pocket Earth Maps & CityMaps2Go offer Wikipedia articles of local POI. Practical when you visit a town and have only a mobile device. Both offer downloading for offline usage.

OSMAnd also does this.

there is [0]

and you can get the wiki-overlay also from wikimedia itself [1] if you click "show nearby articles" in the bottom right, but idk how to link it properly.

[0] https://wikimap.wiki

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_National_Cemetery#/m...

Nice idea!

I found an error though. There's a podcast about the Camino de Costa Rica, a trail that goes from the Pacific to the Caribbean in Costa Rica. But the app has associated it to a street called Camino de Costa Rica in Chiclana, Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Costa_Rica

Oh, good catch. That has been moved to Costa Rica, at Barra del Parismina. That's just one point for the trail....will be adding other ways to show the entire length. Thanks!

Y'all remember the Google Field Trip app from Niantic labs? You could set it up to pop up and read out local facts when you arrived at a new place.

I put together something in a similar vein but attempts to build up an audio tour like experience from the ground up.. old fashioned web scrape then summarized through LLM's: https://summer.ai

Ah I see the creator is in here. Will reach out!

If you want to make the podcast listening experience even better, consider adding a proper podcast player to your site.

For example, you could use https://github.com/podigee/podigee-podcast-player

yes, that makes sense. How would we also do that the other way, adding a 'Maps' tab to the podcast player?

we're having to cut back, as haven't gotten Maps.FM to revenue yet....if anyone has ideas on how to move this forward from a business standpoint please let me know. thanks, Wayne Parker, parker@maps.fm

Fantastic idea. Minor issue is that when you tap on one of the flags, you get the podcast episode notes but you don't get the title of the podcast. Title needs to be prominent.

thank you, feedback very helpful....we found one example where the title wasn't appearing with the pin, and hopefully have fixed that.

I might be misinterpreting what I'm seeing but I don't see titles on any of them. For instance, on one in southern California, the icon showing the podcast art makes it clear that the title of the podcast is Ridiculous History, but when I tap on it, I only see the episode title and have no other clue to tell me what podcast it actually is that this episode is part of.

Now that I'm describing it in more detail I think what I should have said initially is that I'm looking for the title of the podcast itself, not just the episode title.

This is cool! I'd love to see something similar for books, long-form articles, etc. - really anything I can listen to or read that helps to get a feeling for a place.

...so pulling the info from Wikipedia? And then translating text to audio also?

I wasn't thinking text-to-audio, but I wouldn't object. Just something that tells me about all the books, articles, etc. that are set in place X.

Is Wikipedia a good source for this?

Amazing idea. It would be nice to have a filter by language.

Yes, agreed. In the works.

Interesting idea

this is pretty cool. thanks for sharing

Have you heard "that's not a product, it's a feature"? That's what this is: a feature in a product. I love it, mind you, but if a lot of people like it too it'll be copied by Spotify.

thanks, well taken. This is so new that we think our expertise will be of value. Locating audio on the map, we've found, has lots of hidden challenges and we've learned a lot doing thousands of them...

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