1. A vehicle-based computer-implemented method for retrieving information associated with a point of interest (POI), the method comprising: receiving, at a computing system, a data signal representing an identifying gesture performed by a user inside a vehicle, the identifying gesture oriented in a direction and identifying an object exterior to the vehicle; performing gesture recognition on the data signal to determine a direction vector representing the direction of the identifying gesture; accessing location data identifying a current location and orientation of the vehicle; analyzing the direction vector and the location data to generate a target region corresponding to the object identified by the identifying gesture; retrieving information associated with one or more points of interest located in the target region; and providing the retrieved information to the user, the retrieved information including information associated with the object identified by the identifying gesture.