The Press Conference on Wednesday went great. Watch the recording of it on Ustream, here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8864796
We’re really looking forward to an exciting launch on August 23. We also want a lot of input from users as to what features or support they want, so if you have any thoughts, submit them to http://ideas.bustracker.org.
This next week we are going to be working hard to get the Android and Blackberry native clients up and running, so look forward to more information coming out about those launches soon!
10 Days ‘Till Launch.
We’re very excited to show you what we’ve been working on and how much of an impact this project has really be taking. Our press conference is at 4:30 PM in Squires room Brush Mountain A. It will also be streaming online at http://www.sga.vt.edu/sga-media.
Next Wednesday, we will be having a press conference for local news outlets and anyone else interested to come. There will be a quick 10-minute presentation, followed by a question period. It will be in Squires Student Center, Brush Mountain Room A on Wednesday, August 11, at 4:30 p.m. See the SGA’s press release about it, below.
While we’re long at work on our platform-specific versions, check out our text messaging-based app! Note, this is a beta version, and only accepts streets on campus, and a very small selection of buildings (Burruss, Mcbryde, etc.)
Try sending “running routes”, “TCA mcbryde”, or “Tom’s Creek A Kent st. & Washington St.” to (540) 999-6BUS (287).
The end of this week marks about halfway through our project. So where are we?
We are nearly finished with the entire back end of the system, which is on the Google App Engine. This means our entire API, which will be used by all of the client apps, is nearly complete. This API is also the muscle of our educational efforts that will build off of the VT Bus Tracker after this summer.
We are also almost done with our texting (SMS) application, our mobile web browser application for smart phones, and our iPhone/iPad apps. Expect demos to be posted soon!
From here, we will be finishing up our client applications including the Blackberry and Android versions, as well as fine-tuning the things we’ve already got working. Look forward to more demos soon, and get ready for the fall, it’s looking like we’ll be rolling out on time.
One of the major features pushed by the SGA when we entered contracts for funding was integration with Twitter. The purpose of this was meant to allow any mobile phone to access the Bus Tracker by way of text message (SMS). While this sounded good, we have since researched in to the possibility of integrating with twitter to allow non-smart phones to access the application. What we found is that twitter does not provide a feasible way to allow non-smart phones to access the application. Twitter cannot communicate one on one with individuals, because it is built to broadcast publicly. This would mean every user may get an update every time a bus hits a stop. This is only annoying, and not helpful.
Our solution is to build our own text message system that will interact with the back end of the application to communicate with users on non-smart phones. Keep an ear out for more information later, and if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us or use the comments area below.