Odynia.org Blog

Hi all!

I've decided to separate the iTransit blog from what is essentially my personal blog.

You can find the new iTransit blog over at http://www.itransit.com.au/blog/

Thanks for reading!

-bok

Lets start a new drinking game!

Every time the Brumby government announces a new major road project, take a shot. If you're still alive come Christmas, you win

bok

Hi all,

Thought I'd post an update on where we're up to and whats coming up, we've had a surge in users recently and have just crossed 2000 home screen additions.

tramTRACKER

We're now using the mobile tramTRACKER site for the real time data after discussions with Yarra Trams. This doesn't include the destination data so we're matching that against the schedule - it looks more consistent now with the scheduled data, but occasionally results in blank rows with route numbers only. If you see one of these let us know so we can repair it. They're also going to be incorporating some of the ideas in iTransit back into their own offerings.

Native Application

The Native app is continuing development with two versions planned - a free version and a paid for version.

Both versions will feature selective caching and will be able to sync timetable changes over the air - you can control if/when to check for updates. You can also choose which lines/routes you want to use regularly and so save space/bandwidth and get only the data that applies to you - the app will grab missing data from the website as needed, or you can grab everything for complete offline usage.

The free native application will support pretty much everything the current web app does with a few extra goodies. The paid for "pro" version will contain a lot of bonus features, which I'll keep to myself for now

Other things

I've redeveloped the backend recently to allow integration with other services out there, such as Melbourne Transport Updates and more, there is also an API in development that powers this if you have your own services you might like to build. The bus data has been redesigned and the remaining routes will be filled in in the next week or so, similarly the inter-city for Sydney.

Also: faux real time data for Trains

Remeber, vote in the poll!

-bok

Hi all,

Work is well underway for the Native iTransit application, but there are still a few things undecided.

We know that there will be two versions of the application released:

Free Version

There will be a free or "lite" version, which will contain pretty much all of the existing functionality of the web application. (Still undecided about the traffic conditions until I talk to VicRoads)

"Pro" Version

There will also be a "pro" version, for want of a better name. It will be the same as the free version but with additional bonus features. Several of which we know already, some more that we're still considering.

The "pro" version is also a way of supporting additional development - we do this because we love it and we use the software too, but covering development costs is always a plus

So, what would people be willing to pay for a "pro" version? Vote in the poll to the right, leave a comment, or hit us up via twitter.

bok

For those wanting to keep up with the latest updates for iTransit you can follow the twitter feed at htp://twitter.com/itransit_au or the RSS updates of said feed at http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/16022820.rss.

bok

So! Google has finally made its entry into the browser market, and its filled with lies!

Specifically:

Google's new browser software is designed to work "invisibly" and will run any application that runs on Apple's Safari web browser, company officials said.

and

"If you are webmaster, and your site works in Apple Safari then it will work very well in Google Chrome," Pichai said.

So then, fire up Chrome and point it at http://iphone.itransit.com.au/.

So, it seems that not all sites that work in Safari will work under Chrome. Its a fair assumption that most sites don't make heavy use of window.openDatabase (HTML 5 spec) but its still inaccurate to say that all sites that work in Safari will work under Chrome.

Wonder if thats just time/laziness on Google's part not to pull across a more recent version of WebKit or because they wrote their own JS engine (that should be outside the JS engine though..), or because its a competing feature against Google Gears?

Hopefully not the latter. It would be nice to see where Google takes Chrome though as the beta progresses.

Otherwise though, not bad

Update: Looks like they're using the "Safari 3.1" branch of Webkit for the beta, which does support window.openDatabase just fine. Seems to be a compile time option and they're choosing to disable it. More info/source over at http://dev.chromium.org/.

bok

Time to press forward with additional data for iTransit.

Ultimately, I'd like it to be useful to everyone in Australia, to that end we're working on adding data for additional cities. Sydney is first up on the radar, and should be completed shortly.

And after that? Well I'll leave that to you.. check the poll on the right hand side of the screen and vote - I'll work down the list based on your votes.

bok

Hi all,

I've decided that it's somewhat painful trying to group fixes up into a version release for iTransit. Since it is a web app presently, its pretty straight forward to roll smaller revisions out with bug fixes and new features, so that's what I'll be doing.

There is a changelog inside iTransit (under More..) that will list the changes.

bok

Hi!

I've released a new version of iTransit with the following features:

• Melbourne Trains: Scheduled Times
• Melbourne Trams: Live Times (courtesy Yarra Trams)
• Melbourne Buses: Scheduled Times
• Melbourne Traffic: Live Travel Times (courtesy VicRoads)

Browsing/Searching

Browse lines and routes, or search for your station/stop name directly. No more remembering stop IDs! If you know the stop IDs though you can search on those too.

Filtering

View only the selected line/route, view all lines/routes through a stop, or select from a list which routes you'd like to see. You find your way, your way!

Smaller Stops

We have data for all stops, but for brevity (and so you don't have to scroll through a hundred stops!) we only show the major stops by default. They're still there though, hit the Minor Stops button to show or hide them.

Scheduled/Live Times

Where possible we try to show you the live data, but if thats not available we'll go off the timetables, keep and eye on the Live indicator in the toolbar.

Maps

Not sure where that station is? Click the map button to be taken to the Google Maps application, where you'll be shown where it is! You can then use Google to find you and give you directions.

The iTransit Application

The iTransit web application has undergone intensive development in order to deliver these features:

• Small Footprint: The app lives mostly inside Safari's database, so the initial loading of iTransit takes only 2.5KB of data
• Data Caching: Where possible, we use the internal database to cache stop names and lists, so you only ever need to load them once.
• Hardware Acceleration: We use the CSS transitions built into WebKit to do the animations, so its hardware accelerated and smoother.

That's the about blerb anyway.

A native version is in development, and more features are on the way. I'll post more about those sometime in the near future.

bok

Well I must say, this has far and away been the worst opening ceremony in the history of the Olympics for viewers from Australia, and this has nothing at all to do with the Chinese.

I'm sure the opening ceremony was spectacular, but we really didn't see any of it!

Ads cut in everywhere and hid the fireworks and broke any form of continuity there was, and it came back from the ads already into the next portion of the show.

How exactly was anyone meant to enjoy watching that? I know several people are writing letters to complain, how long until a petition appears on the net to get Seven banned from doing the coverage for London?

Thanks anyway Seven for ruining a night that had been hyped for months, I'm sure the Chinese will be equally appalled as to how you've portrayed the start of their games.

bok

Looking for iTransit? Check two posts down.

--

Been playing with touches in Safari, specifically trying to track certain gestures.

If you haven't read it, a good primer on touches/gestures in Mobile Safari can be found here. Its a great starting point.

So now that the its been established as to how to do Drag and Drop and rotating/scaling what about the other one finger gestures that apple employs?

Specifically, I'm trying to replicate the swipe left and right functionality of the photo browser (show previous/next photos), and I've been able to do so.

The trick here is to catch the initial touch event, and the ending touch event and work out where our finger has gone. A key thing to remember is that the touches are passed around and updated by reference, so your original copy of the touch will be updated with a new position.

What I've ended up with is a small class that watches the touchstart and touchend events on the document level, and when it detects a swipe it fires a gesture:swipe event.

How?

The following is the code that I used, you'll need Prototype to make this work.




Is that documented enough to make sense? Drop me a line in the comments if not and I'll see what I can do to explain better

You'll see this gesture used in the new version of iTransit, naturally - and there's more gestures to come!

Cheers,
-bok

I've posted a poll to try and add some sort of prioritisation to my upcoming feature/nice to have list for iTransit.

You'll see it to the right of your screen. Vote for the feature that you would most like to see added, but keep in mind its not an absolute list.

It does allow you guys to have a say in what you think is important though.

For more information about what iTransit it, please see the previous post.

bok

Here's whats coming:

• Smaller, sleeker, faster!
• Favourites
• Searching via station/stop name
• Bus data
• Traffic Information
• VLine Train/Bus data
• Swipe to view next/previous services
• Other cities...
• Investigate LocationService (GPS) integration

While I'm detailing apps that I've played with but never published, there's the beginning of something larger with regards to Melbourne's Public Transport system.

For the moment, its just a google maps version of the network maps with some station/stop info, but you can check it out at http://transport.odynia.org/maps/.

I had planned on going the full stretch and making it the ultimate resource of its type, but my time doesn't seem to be my own lately!

bok