Sunday, April 4, 2010

Rider Alerts & PDX Bus versions in the pipeline

I just noticed that the Rider Alerts page is broken for PDX Bus.  This appears to be because Apple's RSS reader page no longer works when it is used inside applications.  I have a fix for this, but it may be little while before it is released, but not too long I hope!

Version 4.0 is being tested now.  This includes:
  • - Improvements to the Streetcar features, adding location and map support for the streetcars.  This was quite a lot of work, having to "mash up" data from  Next Bus (who provide the Streetcar data).
  • - Complete support for the iPad, including a full screen display and full screen maps.
  • - Fixes for the issues with Rider Alerts.  This was fixed by using a custom page for the RSS feeds.
  • - Copy trip to clipboard - this enables a trip to be copied to the notepad or an SMS message.
FWIW - I didn't buy an iPad... I'm waiting for a 3G version at the end of the month!

9 comments:

Tony said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm waiting for the 3G iPad too. No way the bus driver will miss a big 9.7 inch flashing screen!

Also, thanks for bringing the streetcar info up to level with the rest of TriMet. I'm sure you had fun parsing the webpage data. Too bad NextBus doesn't have an API, so I'm guessing you'll need to revisit your streetcar code when the Eastside expansion opens in 2 years.

Teleportaloo said...

Cool - I'm glad someone else is waiting for the 3G version. Actually NextBus does hzve an API now, but the data is different than TriMet's - for example, they don't use TriMet stop IDs so I have to translate.

Yes, when they open the new line I will have to change it again.

Anonymous said...

I kno you can't use the trimet logo and such, but can you maybe at least apply trimet's color schemes to the app? [the blue (#094D8E) and orange (#F54C00)] u know, make it look unique compared to the other apps that use the same default scheme

Anonymous said...

also, I've come up with a possible new logo for the app. the link to it is below, and I'd like your thoughts.

http://i.imagehost.org/view/0002/pdx_bus_logo

Teleportaloo said...

Hi Anonymous - I really like the colors (and icon) and for a day I thought about using them. However, I looked around the 'net and it seems that color combinations can form part of a trade mark, so I don't know if using them may cause confusion.

I do need to think of a way to make the app "more Portland" in some way! I will try out the colors at some point just to see how it look.

Tony said...

Have you ever thought about being able to show only the routes or lines you are interested in? For example, I have a bookmark set at 5th & Morrison, but I would only take line 8 and nothing else. I don't really need the arrivals for all the other buses.

Teleportaloo said...

Hi Tony - actually I hadn't really thought about that - I'll have a think. It might actually be a little awkward to do (as it'll need extra user interface to select the lines to filter and a way to store them). I'll keep thinking!

Chris Shaffer said...

It's nice that there is a cancel button when I don't want to automatically reload the stop I was checking hours ago. However, sometimes it takes up to 10 seconds for the cancel to implement and return me to the main screen. Is there any way to make that faster?

Teleportaloo said...

That's the thing I'm going to work on next; it works this way because I used a "synchronous" blocking simple API to access the network - I have to use a more complicated call that can be cancelled. (It annoys me too!)