Sep
29
Hello all. First off, thank you. Thank you for all of your support, ideas, and excitement. We are so glad that you have been enjoying the Bus Tracker, and we look forward to working with your feedback to make it even more revolutionary every month.
The Collegiate Times ran a great article today that really sums up how launch went, and what our future plans are. It is reprinted below, because wrote it much better than we could!
From: http://collegiatetimes.com/stories/15911/vt-bus-tracker-looking-to-expand-capabilities
VT Bus Tracker looking to expand capabilities
Tuesday, September 28, 2010; 11:26 PM
by Claire Sanderson, news reporter
After a successful launch in August, developers of the VT Bus Tracker are looking to make improvements to the application.
“Our first week was phenomenal. The first day of classes we got about 8,000 hits to the feed, the next day about 21,000,” said developer and computer science major Alex Obenauer. “Now we average about 40,000 hits every day.”
Obenauer and the rest of the development team — computer science major Michael Dillon, alumnus Travis Webb and computer science professor Eli Tilevich — are attempting to implement ideas submitted through the application’s website.
One improvement the team is working on is adding a notification feature.
Developers plan for riders to receive notifications to their phones when certain buses are coming to certain stops.
“For example, you can tell the app, ‘Alert me two minutes before the last Hethwood bus comes that will arrive at Burruss by 8 a.m.,’” Obenauer said. “It would tell you two minutes before that bus gets to your stop.”
Obenauer said students could also set up this feature to run on certain days for their classes.
“That way you can go out there right before the bus arrives and you don’t have to wait 15 or 30 minutes at the stop,” Obenauer said. “I think it will definitely change the way people use the application.”
Sophomore business major Patrick Finger said he liked using the application.
“I think it’s a great way for students to catch the bus on time more easily,” Finger said.
Finger added that the app could also benefit from more marketing.
“I don’t think many students use it or know what it is,” Finger said.
The team is also looking to fix its program to have more information on tripper buses. The buses are scheduled when normally-scheduled buses on a route become too full, and are common during heavily traveled times such as weekday mornings.
“The problem was that the tripper buses were hybrid buses and they didn’t gave GPS sytems on them, but we’re working on getting that as soon as we can,” Obenauer said.
The team is also rethinking the back end system of the application to make it run more quickly and cleanly. One of the intended uses for the back end system is to let younger computer science students access the data and use the program in their classes.
According to Obenauer, the team is currently rewriting the curriculum for computer science students to incorporate the bus tracker system. The class, beginning next spring, will see students incorporating data from the tracker to learn computer science concepts.
“It allows CS students to build projects that are helpful to them and to their fellow students,” Obenauer said.
The final project for these students will be an open-ended challenge to design any application for the VT Bus Tracker. Select applications would be posted on the group’s website.
One idea for an app that Obenauer hinted at was a heat map of where parties were located on a Friday or Saturday night, using information about how many people get off a bus a certain stops.