About

About Ask Lynda!

I'm Ross Gerring, founder & CTO of Itomic - and an endlessly curious traveller. People, places, cultures, languages, history, politics, the environment... I'm fascinated by all of it. I believe the more we learn about our planet and each other, the more peaceful and connected the world becomes.

Ask Lynda! grew out of a simple traveller’s frustration: at many Points of Interest (POIs), tourist information is wildly inconsistent - sometimes excellent, sometimes sparse, often only in the local language, and usually stuck on a sign or brochure. What if every POI could offer rich, trustworthy information in many languages, as text and as audio?

That’s the idea behind Ask Lynda!: we “join the dots” by associating Wikipedia’s human-curated knowledge with POIs on a world map, then delivering it in multiple languages - both on-screen and via natural-sounding text-to-speech - so more people can access more insight, wherever they are. More languages and more high-quality sources are already in the pipeline.

And who's Lynda? She's a close friend - a true-blue Aussie - one of the most positive, encouraging people I know. In July 2025 we were cycling in Dorset along the Jurassic Coast, chatting about life and ideas. I mentioned this "tourist information" concept (among a few other whacky ones!), and it clicked: all the building blocks to make it real were already there:

  • Wikipedia
  • Maps
  • Automatic multilingual translation
  • Support and backing from Itomic
  • And, most importantly, the ability to “vibecode” the first version myself

About 48 hours later, we had a working proof-of-concept. The rest is history - and the journey’s just getting started.

About Itomic

Founded in Perth in 2000, Itomic is a digital innovation agency of creatives and technologists who partner with organisations to craft bespoke, user-centric digital solutions. We design and build websites, web apps, and mobile apps, and we back them with managed hosting and security so they perform reliably in the real world.

We favour proven open-source technologies - Drupal and WordPress for content-driven sites, Laravel for bespoke web apps, and Flutter for cross-platform mobile - so our clients get flexibility, longevity, and value. With teams in Perth and Melbourne serving clients across Australia (and beyond), we’ve been doing exactly this since 2000.