Just a quick note that thanks to the long-awaited remake of OC Transpo’s Web site, the OCInfo Mobile tool is no longer working. However, please try their new Web site. I personally love it. They also have a new mobile tool since a while now at octranspo.mobi. Plus, there’s a third-party site, octranspo.net, that offers great mobile support for timetable lookup, and works independently from OC Transpo’s site.
This site will close at any time now. I’m glad that my tool was useful for some. Furthermore, I’ve moved in Japan, since last October, so I’m no longer keeping tabs on OC Transpo as much as I used to, and the transportation systems here are simply phenomenal. If you’re interested in Japan, you may want to take a look at my new blog about my new life in this marvellous country on Edojin.
Thank you for your support! Goodbye to all my friends in Ottawa!
Rémi Plourde
Web developer
Saitama, Japan
This is just a short post to let everyone know this Web site and its services will be discontinued in March 2009. I do not have a precise date, but since I don’t have time to maintain this Web site, I’ll just let the domain name expire.
The OCInfo Mobile service will still be available on my other Web site, remiplourde.com. I’m also considering making the source code available to the public.
I was hoping to make this Web site a blog with regular news and updates about OC Transpo, but I have other bigger plans. Here are a few non-official Web sites about OC Transpo I recommend you visit:
- OCTranspo.net: If you liked OCInfo Mobile, you’ll love this Web site.
- OC Transpo Hacks: More tools made by other OC Transpo commuters.
- OC Transpo LiveJournal community: A community I frequently visit and occasionally comment on.
- Blogawa: This is not directly related to OC Transpo. It’s a agglomeration of feeds from sites in Ottawa. They added this site to their list, and I guess they’ll want to take it off after this site is gone. Thanks for the mention!
Thank you for your support over the short life of this site! Happy 2009 to all!
Rémi
When reading Metro this morning, and later when I read OC Transpo’s pamphlet about their summer service, I noticed they released a new mobile service, octranspo.mobi.
Of course, it outdoes mine. With their service, you can get schedules for any route and any stop, and you also have a mobile version of the travel planner. Really handy!
However, I haven’t been able to make it work on my old mobile phone. It’s an old model, a Samsung SPH-A580, but I’m surprised that a mere table in their schedule output prevents my browser from working. I suspect it will work when I use Opera Mini instead.
Also, there are no ways to bookmark results on their mobile service, something which was really easy with my OCInfo Mobile service. One using my service to retreive a schedule for a certain stop and route combination can easily bookmark it for future and updated reference. With octranspo.mobi, you need to input your request every time, like on octranspo.com.
One thing that surprises me is the look of the mobile site. It’s green and has a bird for a logo. Is OC Transpo willing to do a complete overhaul of its design and visual identity?
Nevertheless, I recommend you give octranspo.mobi a try. As for OCInfo Mobile now, I’m not sure how long it will last. I wasn’t planning to maintain it forever, and OC Transpo now has an official way for their riders to get schedules on their mobile devices.
It’s been a bit more than a month since I wrote here, so I thought I’ll give a quick update about this Web site and the OCInfo Mobile tool.
Recently, no work has been done on either of them. However, I do have plans to add more functionality during summer.
I’ve been busy since last month at work. I’m also helping organising the Japan Pavillion at the Tulip Festival this year. The festival is ending next Monday, so if you have a chance this weekend, drop by our pavillion and say hi!
If you’d like to be up-to-date with what is happening at ocinfo.ca, subscribe to the site’s RSS feed or get notifications by e-mails!
People asked me to get them the data from OC Transpo to develop their own apps.
Right now, I do not intend to share my data or my code to anyone for the some simple reasons:
- The code is still in beta.
- Although the code has been completely re-written from the alpha version of 560 Mobile (the old version of OCInfo Mobile) to use object-oriented code, it’s still not pretty.
- The data users get is not always accurate. It’s rare, but I don’t want to give these problems to other developers.
Although, the result page of OCInfo Mobile has its HTML quite well formatted. Using a combination of a good XML parser and proper XPath queries, I’m sure any developer can get the data they want using the result page. As long as you state that OC Transpo is the maintainer of the data, OCInfo prepared the data for use, and neither of us approves your application, I have no problem with third-party developers parsing the result page of OCInfo Mobile to get the data they want.
I thought I would have time to manage a site about OC Transpo, but I overestimated my free time. From now on, most of the posts on OCInfo will be about the applications that help you get schedule and bus route information from OC Transpo, like OCInfo Mobile. Other posts related to the public transit will be kept to a minimum.
I’ve been interviewed Monday by Tim Wieclawski about my OCInfo Mobile application. He wasn’t sure when the story will appear, and frankly, I was so busy recently I just forgot about it.
That’s until some people started to glance at me on my way to work. My face is on page 3, as in inset for the story about OCInfo Mobile, and on the front page of their Web site.
Tim did a great job on his story! In fact, I admire the people working at Metro. I’m a regular reader myself (but somehow not this morning), and most of the stories are written by Tracey Tong and Tim Wieclawski. Either Metro hires robots or those journalists don’t get enough sleep. How do they do it?
Go ahead and read the article, or download today’s version of Metro in PDF format.
560 Mobile, now renamed OCInfo Mobile, was featured on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning. Here’s a excerpt from the December 27, 2007 article:
Ottawa transit users can get schedules for their nearest bus stop e-mailed to them or formatted for their cellphone web browsers — but they won’t find those services on the OC Transpo website.
Instead, those services have been developed and made available by OC Transpo riders, such as Rémi Plourde, Michael Smith and Dave O’Neill.
Read the full article.
Recent Comments