Fri, 21 Aug 2009 3:32p.m.
By Ludwig Wendzich
I am standing around with nothing to do because I'm waiting for the bus. I have no real accurate way of knowing when the bus is going to be at my stop (or even how far away it is from me) without visiting the maxx.co.nz website and filling in the (albeit short- looking) but in reality quite long form just so I can see the information I want.
After filling in this deceptive form I get presented with a schedule and little other information that would be more useful, such as where the bus currently is and how long it is realistically expected to take. So instead of arriving a couple of minutes early to the bus stop, just in time for my bus, I — along with a couple of dozen other people — stand around for upwards of half an hour waiting for the bus to arrive.
During this time I spend my time checking email, twitter, facebook, my RSS feeds and when all that is done and dusted I listen to my 'Recently Added' playlist.
All the above mentioned, less important — especially to my current objective — tasks, are quite simple to do and take very little time to get started. With iPhone applications I don't need to fill in any forms to get started (not even a user name and
password) and I can instantly get the information I desire so badly because I hope that it will help me kill the next, quite unnecessary, half an hour wait.
After recently purchasing an iPhone 3GS, I figured that with the GPS capability and the ample development time available since the iPhone 3G (which debuted the GPS capability) had been released, that MAXX would have an iPhone application that knew where I was and could tell me which buses were on their way to me, better yet, I hoped that it would be an accurate estimate instead of just running from a schedule.
No luck. Not with the accurate estimate, not even with a simple application that knows where I am and displays the next 10 buses scheduled to arrive.
There weren't even an application that replicated the website capability (including that horrid form.) At least that way I would save on reloading the whole website as I was trying to use their service!
After tweeting my desperate plea for someone to take the initiative that MAXX obviously lacked, I found out that there were no public APIs for the transport timetables providing by MAXX — what?
Isn't it a public service? Well can't we just use robots to scrape that information from the HTML on their website, no? That's against their Terms of Service. How can public information, for public transport, be so hard to get hold of, and even be illegal to use by the public domain?!
Ideally, there should be an application that knows where I am (which eliminates the first field from the form on MAXX.co.nz) and defaults the time period "the next # buses."
By default it should show all arriving buses at your stop and then have the option to filter by route number (for example, I would say 680, 681) or even just destination (for example, "Botany Town Centre".) I should be able to favourite these destinations so that I don't have to type them out all the time.
Knowing when my bus is going to arrive shouldn't be so painful; Come on MAXX! If Twitter and Google Reader will open up their APIs for 3rd party developers, why can't you? If you are so stingy, at least roll your own, like Facebook and Yellow have done!