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

[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.