The Travel App I Couldn't Find, So I Built It
I've always been that person staring out the plane window wondering about the towns below—what's their history, what do people do there, what's it like to live there? On road trips, I'd see signs for towns I'd never visit and wish I could just know something about them as I passed.
But I couldn't find anything that just told me about places as I passed them in real time.
So I built JollyTango. I spent the past eight months working on it full-time, and it launches October 30th on the App Store and Google Play Store. The hard part wasn't the audio or the GPS—it was orchestrating everything to work seamlessly across flights, cars, trains, cruises, and walking tours while being smart about battery life and context. It needed to know when to talk, when to be quiet, and how to adapt what it says based on your speed, location, and interests.
I've loved building this thing, and I'm hoping it clicks with people who are curious about the world around them.
That’s such a cool idea. I always wonder about the same thing when I travel.
I love how JollyTango turns that curiosity into something you can actually hear in real time.
I’m building something smaller called rankiwiki.com, and reading this reminds me why side projects that make people see the world differently are worth doing.
Wishing you a great launch on the 30th!
Thanks so much, really appreciate it. Wishing you all the best with your project!
Hey can you say a bit more about how it works? Do you read out articles or something from every place? Or how is it working?
Hey, it doesn’t read existing articles. The app generates custom audio narration every few minutes by combining its own curated content with LLMs, along with local photos, news, and weather based on your location and interests.
I couldn’t find it so I built it sounds like a beginning of a great story. Something similar happened to me in the past year and I’m actually also about to launch end of the month 🙂
It sounds like a pretty cool idea, how does it work in terms of content filling? The idea is that users will fill it so eventually you have all places around the world?
That’s awesome — congrats on your upcoming launch! In my case, the content isn’t user-generated. The app combines its own curated material with LLM-based data and narration, local photos, news, and weather, and automatically plays new stories every few minutes based on where you are and what you’re interested in.
How does it work, like you press a button and gives you a Wikipedia summary of your current location?
The app goes well beyond Wikipedia. It automatically plays location-specific audio narration every few minutes by running a series of logic steps to combine data from several internal and external sources.
Sounds great. Will try.
Sure, send me your email and I will provide you access via Apple TestFlight. If you’re on Android, I should have external access ready in a week.
Sounds like a lot of effort and edge cases were covered! Hope people like it!
Thank you! I hope so too 🤞
Sigma moment
👍
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