I might get a full paragraph by the time I retire

[davidn]

In a remarkably similar turn of events to the last time I was in a Boston newspaper, Track the T received a stunning half a sentence in a Boston Herald article a week after the transport reporter contacted me for a phone interview. He was particularly interested in its catering to Blackberry users, as it was until recently unique among the MBTA showcase in being a service that was on the Internet and could be accessed via anything (even a desktop computer, as you would think I was the only person in the world who still uses one).

I might as well take this opportunity to ask my watch list in general... what exactly is the attraction of "apps", now, anyway? I've been encouraged from a couple of quarters to produce iPhone or Android application versions of my current page, but even though I say to them that it's a possibility (and would do so if I had the time, seeing as people would then pay for it), I just don't really see how it helps to produce functionally identical things for specific devices when they can all get to the existing one anyway. It's been demonstrated to me that you can create a pseudo-app that links to a webpage on the iPhone itself, so you're not even missing out on the convenience of being able to open it from your desktop.

Still, if people are going to pay again for something you've already done if you make it available to far fewer people, all the better. And I should be proud of getting my name in the paper - most people have to be hit by a train to achieve that.

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

re: Apps

How do you know when somebody has an iPhone?

They tell you.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

You seriously have a train that goes to a place called "Braintree"?! I want to come there, just to take that train, so that I can tell people that I've been to Braintree. "Braintree". . .

Perhaps the attraction of apps is created solely by marketing, so companies can sell a thing people could otherwise get for free in other ways. Seems to be how most of business operates, from what I can tell.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Braintree is also a town in Essex, where a friend and colleague of mine is from.

Due to an insane and stupid turn of events, he's returned to living there with his parents, and is making the daily two-hour commute to West London from it. [His last attempt to get a new flat fell apart really, really badly.]

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I would say convenience. Example, you use the calculator on the desktop rather than one on the internet. So it would work the same for the apps. Like currency converters, I normally just google it on the desktop computer, but if I had to do that on the blackberry, I would rather have an app so I can do it more conveniently and not need to wait for several pages to load.

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. It's much more convenient to have your regularly used things as buttons, rather than opening up safari and then to your bookmarks, and possibly to a page that loads slower than the app (as the app has all the background gubbins already there, is just updating new info).

[davidn]

The buttons problem was one that seemed to be addressed by the iPhone itself, with its pseudo-apps that you can drag out from webpages - but the point about the traffic is a good one. With every byte at something of a premium, it does make a lot of sense to have as much as possible already on the device and only transmit the bare minimum of the data required - the results page for Track the T is only 5KB, but that could be taken down to a transfer of... less than 100 bytes if I were just to transmit what was essential.

[davidn]

The calculator makes sense because there's no need for you to be online when using it - this is more about things that absolutely require Internet access to run (a currency convertor is sort of in the middle, depending on whether you need it up-to-the-minute or not). The page loading is... I suppose not something I'd seen as a huge issue, but yes, with the interpretative part of an application already on the phone, data transfer could be reduced a massive amount.

T apps

[(Anonymous)]

U need apps for the commuter rail too. Keep in mind they dont play nice with the T, so you will have to speak to their people directly. Real time schedule info helps commuters decide what to do and where to go, whether to wait now or take another line or system to get to their destination. Thats why apps are popular vs. PC or laptop access to the internet. Also, many hand held devices are impossibly slow to access the web. The T's new status display system is unreliable and primitive compared to whats available in the marketplace. The matrix train announcement boards and computerized PA announcements MBCR uses are also primitive and unreliable. Attitude adjustment and proper funding are needed to bring the system up to date.

Re: T apps

[davidn]

Yes, this is one of the very few things that I think that T has done very well - the decision to release their data out to other people before they started doing anything with it themselves, as it seems the hobbyists have put together things that are far better than anything they've done - people seem to suffer a vaccuum of competence if they're within the organization itself.

I haven't actually seen any of the MBTA's real-time boards myself because I don't take the T much at those stations - I remember hoping for train time announcements all the way back when the LED boards were put up, instead of the sort of 24-hour propaganda machines we got instead.

I suppose my point about applications was that you need Internet access for these applications no matter where you are, and that an app version would make no difference... but after a couple of the comments above, I can see that you'd want to keep traffic down to an absolute minimum for people accessing it via a smartphone.