David Zwarg started his research project, the BusMinder application, in February, 2010 as a response to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MBTA)'s call for entries in the Developers Real T ime Challenge. The goal of the challenge was to call on developers to create applications using the MB TA Real-Time XML Trial Feed - which includes data for specific bus routes - accessible through the internet, mobile phones, land-line phones, text messages, software applications, and any widely accessible software platform. BusMinder is an experiment, designed to enable users to create bus reminders (’busminders’) for their favorite bus stop(s). It enables users to create bus reminder alerts (’busminders’) to receive estimated arrival times of bus stop(s) that are important for them by SMS or email. Users walk through the process of:
- Selecting a bus stop
- Selecting a reminder type (sms or email)
- Selecting a time window
The application saves those settings and reminds the user when an MBTA vehicle is approaching that stop, and how far away it is in minutes. Once a user registers, they can set up multiple reminders (commuting to work and commuting to home, for example).
Though MassDOT did not select BusMinder as a winner in the competition David continues to work on the development of the application and hopes to expand it to other cities. Check out David's blog post about his BusMinder project:
http://www.azavea.com/blogs/labs/2010/03/azavea-massdot-dev-challenge/