Archive for April, 2008

Data and code availability

Published
by
Rémi
on April 9, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

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:

  1. The code is still in beta.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

OCInfo now only about schedules

Published
by
Rémi
on April 9, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

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.

Car accidents kills grandmother waiting in bus shelter

Published
by
Rémi
on April 3, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

From Ottawa Citizen:

An 84-year-old woman lost control of her Toyota Corolla on Wednesday, levelling a Lincoln Fields bus shelter and killing a 66-year-old woman inside.

That’s just horrible.

OCInfo Mobile featured in Metro

Published
by
Rémi
on April 2, 2008
in Uncategorized
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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.