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Mapkin — The first GPS w/ crowdsourced voice guidance
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Hey Jake & Marc! I heard about this almost a year ago from Evan and have been excited to try it out. How long have you been working on mapkin? What can you tell me about the backend, how's it work?
@mscccc Hey Mike. Great question.
We’ve built a flexible narration engine that dynamically combines on-the-ground facts about parts of the route (right turn on Smith Street; turn is at a traffic light) with user submitted subjective content (this is a tight turn; warn to slow down before turning; mention the pink house at the corner). This allows it to create rich dialogues which the app speaks at the appropriate points as you drive:
“In a quarter mile at the pink house, turn right on Smith Street”,
and then just before the turn:
“Turn right at the traffic light onto Smith Street. Be sure to slow down, it’s a tight turn.”
I'm leaving out many, many delicate details, but that's the gist. At a lower level, we’re a Python shop and touch almost all of the awesome Python geospatial libraries when creating any given route.
Such a great concept. My girlfriend always describes driving directions to me in bizarre ways so as long as she's not writing your algos this app will be AWESOME.
This is a very cool idea, from an awesome BOSTON company! Check out their video:
@jsneedles A huge shoutout to @lonelysandwich and his talented team for producing this amazing video. Huge fan of their work and all they do to help the startup community.
Thanks for the hunt, Jeff!
Hello Product Hunters! Marc Regan here. I’m one of the cofounders of Mapkin.
Here’s a quick backstory on why we’re on this journey:
GPS has two jobs - to pick the best route, and to guide you along it. Many apps have become very good at picking routes, but there’s been little innovation in the voice instructions that help you safely follow the route.
We believe this is the next big opportunity in navigation - creating a safer, less stressful, more natural driving experience. When you’re driving with Mapkin, you’re hearing a mix of high visibility landmarks, local tips, and street names that more closely resembles the way a person sitting next to you would give directions. We’ve added more variations and some light ‘human’ touches to make our navigation assistant feel a bit more personable without being distracting.
Users submit the tips we use in our instructions, so the more tips we have in an area, the better Mapkin is.
I’ll be on here all day with my cofounder Jake. Happy to answer any questions!
Marc
this looks really awesome. do you do walking directions? this would be mostly useful in that case?
@ourielohayon Thanks!
We’re focused on driving directions at the moment. For walking, we've found it's usually okay for most people to orient themselves by looking at their phone/watch as they approach an intersection. A normal map just works most of the time. When driving, we don’t have that luxury and there are lots of critical details that have to be just right as you approach at speed. Today’s nav apps don’t point out the things that a person would tell you if they were in your car guiding you. We’re trying to capture that so the spoken voice guidance is clear allowing everyone to just keep their eyes on the road.
Congrats @marcregan @jwass2000 and your entire team on the launch. Downloaded the app and super excited to try it out today :). Loved the onboarding flows.
@gauravdmehta Thanks. We wanted the onboarding to capture the conversational tone of our GPS voice. Glad you liked it.
Mapkin is awesome for adding local relevant info for directions. Priceless for creating maps for my parents who seem to always miss the actual directions.
@andrewjb44 Thanks! Living in a part of Cambridge that is harrowing to get to from the highway, I know exactly what you mean. Was awesome to be able to go in and perfect the directions... way easier to get to my place now :)
Hey Product Hunt. I work on the backend here at Mapkin. Happy to answer any questions you have about the app or the tech.
@marcregan I remember talking to you about this years ago at the CIC. Awesome to see the vision come to fruition. Congrats!
Felt