10.07.08

Seattle buses, mobile internet, and me

Posted in design, productivity at 11:16 pm by rachel

It works like this: I get to the bus stop, I check the time on my cell phone, and I wait nervously. When’s the next bus scheduled? Is it on time? Will I be waiting 2 minutes or 20? Or forever? Most of the time I have no way of knowing.

Ok, sure, I could find this information on my iPhone. But it would involve visiting two separate extremely fugly websites that are even worse on a small screen: Trip Planner and MyBus. On MyBus you can save frequent queries, kind of, by bookmarking search results – but no such luck on Trip Planner. I have to type in my start and end addresses each time, even though 95% of the time they’re both in the top 5 addresses I enter.

In short, it takes several minutes of fiddling. And several minutes of flashing an iPhone around while standing at an unlit bus stop is not generally regarded a great plan.

I was about to post a plea that someone write an acceptably mobile-formatted web app that pulls data from both of these sites, or perhaps an iPhone app that does, but then I thought to check the App Store (crazy, I know).

Sure enough, I found Seattle Bus [iTunes Store link], an iPhone app that does some of the above. It looks like it pulls from MyBus, but doesn’t have trip planning functionality… yet? But it does locate the nearest bus stop based on your location, which is sweet. I’ll just hope that trip planning comes along soon. In the meantime, I’m buying this baby ($9.99) and checking it out.

Another contender is OneBusAway, a free iPhone-optimized web app with MyBus-like functionality, which I’ll also be checking out.

Let me know if there are other solutions, especially ones that integrate trip planning. Efficiency in my daily travels is kind of… a priority for me.

03.06.08

Election 2008: Close-reading the websites

Posted in design at 10:23 pm by rachel

And I don’t mean the text. A NY Times article from last month examines the websites of the Democratic contenders, analyzing stylistic elements to extrapolate things about the candidates’ personalities and campaign strategies.

The conclusions were underwhelming: Barack appeals more to a young, more tech-savvy crowd, and has a more unified message. Yes. Hillary appeals more to traditional Democrats, and has a more politician-y image. Yes.

But though the conclusion may be hum-drum, the metaphor used to frame the article is kind of hilarious:

On one thing, the experts seem to agree. The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

Check it out: Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? NY Times: Feb 4, 2008.