Bus Illuminati

[davidn]

I was at a meeting with the department of transportation yesterday evening - I'd found a reminder about their invitation to developers when I went to look for updates on the bus feed, and went along to find out what the other people working with them were doing. It was the closest to a suited board meeting that I'm ever likely to get - it was held around a long table in a dimmed conference room, with a whiteboard in a cabinet and everything, at the top of a tower after everyone else had gone home, like being part of some secret transportation illuminati. No, of course it wasn't, it was just talking about buses and how to improve the information that we gather from the feed, but you've got to allow me some sort of illusion of importance - particularly as there were some things discussed that we were asked not to mention to anyone else just yet, because the plans for them aren't quite worked out.

In the morning, I got an email from the manager who'd organized the meeting, saying he'd looked at my bus tracker, that he himself had used it in the past and that I should be promoting it more. So I'm going to finally get a few real domain names for myself, including one for the tracker specifically - I just need to work out what to call it. Track the T? Watch the T? MBTA-watch? BostonBusTracker? wheresmysoddingbus.com? I'd welcome any outside suggestions.

Later the same evening, I got the chance to actually see it working for the first time - from the flat and in the office, I'm nowhere near any of the buses covered by the available routes, but yesterday we were in a cafe with the 66 bus route right outside through the window. From there, I could load up the countdown page on a borrowed iPhone, and just look at it when there was about a minute left and say "There's going to be a bus going that way behind me... now". >Zoom.< (Actually, that's not really an appropriate sound effect for most of the buses - it should be more along the lines of "Wheeze, cough, splutter", but that's not as impressive.) It sounds like such a little thing, but after just having to wait blindly to be picked up for so long, this thing is like having a window into the Matrix and seeing how it's working underneath. It feels really special to be one of the few people who know that it's available just now - but my duty now is to remove that exclusivity by spamming it around to as many people as possible!

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

waitingforabus.com

[davidn]

Very good! Also, sadly, very taken.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Actually, I quite like wheresmysoddingbus.com (mostly for the reason that I keep thinking it sounds like the brainchild of a frustrated modern-day-era Edmund Blackadder), but it'd probably need shortening to wheresmybus.com or wheresthebus.com before the delicate ears of the American public would be ready for it. Sadly, that realisation set most of my original thoughts to sarcasm mode - howmuchlonger.com, imalreadylate.com, isanyonecoming.net, and so on. Unfortunately, at least two of those sound like they should be used for purposes far less salubrious than tracking public transport, so they may not be that helpful. (Then again, they may - I guess it depends on how cheeky the Boston Department of Transportation are feeling. :P)

D.F.

[davidn]

I might buy that one up as an alternative or something, if I get a discount for getting a bulk of them :) I've been meaning to get myself an actual one anyway instead of going with the cheap-as-free .co.nr all the time...

I like your thoughts, too, so thanks for those! The trick is finding a good one that's specifically about the MBTA but doesn't appear to actually be directly associated with them, and that isn't already taken...