Heypoint.

I have been working on a waypoint based social messaging system where the messages can only be read in one place. This was a secret project but I feel I should announce it to make myself finish it.

For many years I have been playing with real life location and storytelling. My Adventure Stop project, my (ha, award winning!) Relative Fiction project and lots of experiments with audio and other things triggered at specific location spots.

For what became this project I initially divided London up into a hexagonal grid and allowed messages (triggering sound) to be played at various points with people able to construct stories matched to streets and routes.

I then realised that as with many projects I overcomplicate things so I’ve gone for a simpler model:

• Messages are posted to specific real world locations and can only be posted to that location at that location, not remotely
• The messages can only be read when actually at that location.
• A hint of where such points are can be shown on a map but with no or little mention of what the content within them is.
• When reading a message a user has it stored in their history which serves three purposes:
  • A user can re-read a message or lists of messages
  • The placer of a message can see who has read their messages
  • A message can be dropped into the world with a limited number of times it can be picked up, allowing for scavenger hunt type games or other limited messages / races

My current and hopefully final plan is to leave this as is and not overcomplicate it with further options. The fun will be seeing how artists and others use it.

If you are an artist and want to write some content or trial a version of this, please get in touch.

I’ve spoken about this with people for many years now and built similar things that people have liked, so I think this one might work.

The heypoint.com domain is currently £2,000. I like the name and I think my searching for it has pushed it up from the £500 it was on a year ago. Maybe I should buy it to force myself to finish it?