Field Trip is a free iPhone app was developed in conjunction with our friends at Altas Obscura. I'm using it on an upcoming road trip from LA to Phoenix.

Field Trip, your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you is now on the iPhone! Field Trip runs in the background on your phone. When you get close to something interesting, it will notify you and if you have a headset or bluetooth connected, it can even read the info to you.

Field Trip can help you learn about everything from local history to the latest and best places to shop, eat, and have fun. You select the local feeds you like and the information pops up on your phone automatically, as you walk next to those places.

Field Trip for iOS (Via iDownLoadBlog)

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Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: family iphone travel

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TheKaz1969

… also available on Android phones.
- http://illustratorhints.com/ Jesseham
  
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject.scout
- nox
  
  … and not available in Canada.
  - curgoth
    
    Why I like the comments here – the first three comments answered all my questions about this.
- retrojoe
  
  Yeah, I was thinking to myself “Why would Google release this only on iPhone?” Of course it’s not an “an iPhone guide” it’s a smartphone guide which happens to be available on both Android and the iPhone.
  - http://illustratorhints.com/ Jesseham
    
    And has been available on the Android side for at least a few months now.
Atvaark

“Unique things in the world” but available only on the US store.
- Reverend Loki
  
  Well, of course. Everyone knows that, outside of the US, all there are is a bunch of well-documented tourist spots.
  
  That said, there is nothing wrong with aspiring to be full of global info, but starting at a level closer to home. I’m sure it will be full of data from around the world when it comes out of beta.
  
  Just, while waiting for it to come out of beta, remember it is a Google product….
  
  (OK, technically it’s at version 1.08. Just had to go and ruin a good joke, didn’t you? I hope you’re happy with yopurself.)
  - retepslluerb
    
    Actually, I don’t mind it bring US centric. I’d rather have one well documented region than one well documented region plus half-assed efforts.
    
    But why tourists traveling to the US aren’t supposed to use it, I don’t understand.
muriel leventis

I recommend checking out the mystery castle in phoenix and gold mine.
Lincoln Eddy

Got it on Android. It lets me know if there’s an Ingress portal nearby too, which is a useful thing for us Resistance heroes. Or the drones of the Enlightened.
Casual_Economy

Meh, it’s too cluttered with things I’m not interested in. Needs a better filtering system. Also would be better if the categories weren’t color coded with a tiny little bar that’s hard to see, but with an actual word (i’m also sorta color blind).
http://www.raines.com/ raines

Notable for feature comparison: HearPlanet, which specializes in audio tours (recorded narration for top tourist spots, text-to-speech for wikipedia entries). Available for Android and iOS (pre-6.0, unlike Field Trip). I’m not affiliated, but I know the founder. http://hearplanet.com/
http://twitter.com/rodedwards rodedwards

I’ll be in California and NYC in the next few weeks and would love to have this app. Too bad I’m from Canada. This makes zero sense.
majordeegan

tired of the blinding iPhone-centric biais. It’s amusing that the title of the post contains the words “google’s…” and yet sounds like it’s IOS only.

Google's Field Trip - an iPhone guide to the "cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you"

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

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