tmro

Overview
On Thursday 17th of September Apple approved WelliBUS. Now the people in Wellington, NZ have a new option when it comes to finding out when their bus comes:
- use www.metlink.org.nz
- txtBUS 287 (20c / msg)
- 0800 801 700 (free)
- WelliBUS (free, needs an active internet connection)

A quick look at txtBUS will show you what a neat service it is. Type the stop number (optionally the service number and time), send yr msg to BUS (287) and there you go. But what happens when you don’t know that stop number? Or what if you forget the txt syntax? You can browse the metlink website or you can call their 0800 number. Alas neither option is convenient. This is where WelliBUS excels!

With WelliBUS you can do everything that you can do with txtBUS but you can also find out the bus stop number by searching by a street name or by simply tapping a GPS button that will do the hard work for you. Then you’ll be returned a list of nearby stops. Just tap one and you’re done! WelliBUS let’s you filter by date or service number just as you’d expect it to.

Launch
WelliBUS has been out there for only a few days now and I have to say I am impressed by the feedback I’ve received. Thank you everyone.
I don’t know if it is because it’s free or because Wellingtonians love their iPhones or because they use public transportation a lot.

I know many of you are asking about real time bus information, it’s coming but you have to be patient, from what I’ve heard you won’t have to wait much longer… At this point treat this as a rumor.

I hear a few of you have found some issues, please post them here as comments and I will prioritize them and tackle them as soon as I can. I know there is a typo and I know that if you filter by buses using 00 prefixes the app fails to filter. So if you search for service 008 please use just 8 instead.

If you want a copy, the app is here WelliBUS

Rest assured the app will stay free, ad-free, bloatware free. But if you like it I encourage you to download one of my paid apps from here: tmro apps.

Cheers…

p.s. My close friends know the funny story of how this application was conceived, but this is neither the place nor the time to share that story…

p.p.s. please leave your comments and feature requests as comments below.

The Sun JavaOne conference is now in progress and one of the interesting things that have been announced so far is the JATA.

Together with France Telecom and Orange, Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Vodafone, Sun announced the Java Application Terminal Alignment (JATA), which they promised would reduce the number of tests application developers would need to go through to ensure their applications run on different networks and handsets.

Also promised are a publisher ID digital certificate to authenticate a person and application, and R&D signing for developers to test their applications.

I am looking forward to learning more about it… in the mean time there is always j2mepolish