Building a Private Map of the Places That Matter

Most map products want to become a feed: places to rate, photos to share, people to follow, recommendations to react to. I wanted something quieter: a private record of the places that actually matter to me. Map of Exploration is an offline Android project for saving a place memory—a title, category, optional note, and optional coordinates—without creating another account, social graph, or tracking surface. The data should outlive the app The core requirement is portability. A place record is a validated UUID, timestamp, and small set of fields that can be exported as a schema-versioned JSON archive. ...

September 21, 2026 · 2 min · Allen Dior

Almanac

An Android time capsule for one intentional portrait per day. Originals stay on-device, exports are explicit, and the design avoids feeds, analytics, tracking SDKs, and background network access. Status: Phase 1 built Stack: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, CameraX, Room

August 15, 2026 · 1 min · Allen Dior

Map of Exploration

A privacy-first Android app for recording place memories locally. It stores entries with Room, validates a schema-versioned JSON archive on import/export, and has no network client or account system. Status: MVP built Stack: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Room, JSON archive format

August 13, 2026 · 1 min · Allen Dior