Google travel directions gadget puts public transit directions everywhere… oh, wait, they don’t include transit?
From Google Maps Mania:
The Google Maps team have released a handy ‘Travelling Directions’ gadget in time for the holiday period. A lot of people will be doing a lot of travelling over the next two weeks. Now with the new directions gadget, you can bring driving and walking directions to your home page or even to your own website.
By copying and pasting a single line of code, any website can offer customized door-to-door directions to their users. Users can then print the directions with a single click. Websites can even change the default destination to an address of their own by visiting the gadget creation page. This is a great option for businesses who can embed the gadget on their websites so that their customers can quickly get directions to the business.
More at Google LatLong: “The Gift of Gadgets“.
At first I hopefully expected that transit directions were included as part of the travel gadget. It would be a more elegant and easier way for websites to incorporate transit directions into their content than, for example, what I worked out for the North Coast Journal event calendar. Read more
Thoughts on “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of organizing without organizations”
By now most people know about Wikipedia, the collaboratively-written encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Isn’t that great and impressive that millions of people who don’t know each other can create such a useful and comprehensive resource? There are many other powerful examples of online collaboration, and sometimes it seems as if there is an equal number of books on the shelves that promise to explain the collaborative production revolution.
Can you tell from my tone that I’ve become cynical about the collection — sometimes it seems like a genre — of books that surround this subject? Well, there’s at least one that I can say is well worth reading — Here Comes Everybody.
Here Comes Everybody is full of examples of internet tools being used for social movements, and collaborative production, including examples that lots of people have heard of (Wikipedia and Linux), and other less-commonly known or discussed examples like political flash mobs in Belarus, citizen journalists in the 2004 southeast Asian tsunami, or the effort to get one woman’s mobile phone back in New York City. Some of the most interesting examples are those which failed, and Shirky discussed what was missing from them — whether it lacked a plausible promise, an acceptable bargain, or just used the wrong technology.
Recently, I returned to some of the ideas and examples in Here Comes Everybody to think about what they may mean for public transit agencies and transit advocates. Read more
Feedback on iPhone’s transit directions & maps
The Google Transit team sent out an announcement to their partners on some of the early responses to the inclusion of Google Transit in the default software for the iPhone in the 2.2 update. I’ve been excited about the potential for easy-to-use transit information on handheld wireless devices since I started doing work with Google Transit. It seems that presenting transit as a ready option, alongside driving and walking instructions, on one of the most popular mobile devices is changing the way people think about transit and inspiring some new riders. Here’s the message Google sent:
Google Transit has reached a new milestone – with the new iPhone 2.2 firmware update, the iPhone puts public transportation and walking on even footing with driving directions in Google Maps for mobile (GMM).
From now on, any time an iPhone user asks for directions in an area where Google has public transit schedules, the transit route is at their fingertips. Better yet, it defaults to the last travel mode used, so someone who always takes public transportation will get transit directions by default.
This is a huge free upgrade for all the agencies who have shared their schedule data with Google (and other developers). This, along with the other transit-supporting versions of Google Maps for mobile for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Series 60, makes it easy for an agency to get their schedule and route information into millions of pockets and purses. Read more
Transit directions on the iPhone
The reason I bought an iPhone was an early-October rumor that the Google Transit trip planner, and walking directions, were going to become part of the iPhone’s mapping application with the 2.2 software update.
Sure enough, in late November, it happened (link is to Google blog). And, it’s great.
As of October 21, 2008, Apple had sold 13 million iPhones. That’s a pretty good-sized user base to reach with mobile transit directions.
Since the iPhone has GPS built-in, you can query for transit directions from where you are without entering a start location, just an end location. One nice touch (no pun intended) is being able to use street view to see what a start, transfer, or end stop location looks like.
Read more
Rider-powered customer service for transit
Less than a year ago, I saw a presentation on GetSatisfaction.com, a site that hosts user-powered customer service forums. To me, the site offers an inspiring, slightly provocative, and savvy approach to customer interaction.
You can browse some of their (beautiful and interesting) slide decks online. One presentation is Customer Service is the New Marketing. The other is Be Like the Internet – 8 steps to success in a post 2.0 world. It’s not a presentation, but I also recommend checking out their very charming Company-Customer Pact.
One of their points is that customers have so many venues to vent, rant, and communicate in the networked world that their voices are going to be heard and trumpeted all over the internet regardless of whether a company sets up a forum at GetSatisfaction.com. Wouldn’t you rather this happen in a forum where customers feel like they are heard, where the campany cares, and where people remind each other they are dealing with human beings?
They boil this idea down to a few suggestions:
- Reduce your sphere of control to increase your sphere of influence
- The way for a business to thrive in the networked world is to adapt to the network (get used to it being out of your control)
- Most of what matters to your business is happening outside your business
Transportation equity and online transit information
In the U.S., many people think of public transportation as a service for the most economically-disadvantaged people.
Since computers and internet access cost money, I’ve had a few people suggest to me that online transit information is not actually serving the needs of less-well-off transit riders very well. I don’t think that bears out.
First, more people are online than you think. Overall, 75% of U.S. adults use the internet, and 56% of people who make less than $30,000/year use the internet. As for transit users in particular, Transit Marketing found that 65% of transit riders in the Sacramento area had access to the internet either at home or work (and 44% of riders had used Sacramento RT’s website).
More interestingly, wireless users who earn less than $20k/year are more likely to text or use mobile data services than people who earn $40-$50k per year, and as are folks who make $20k-$40k/year compared to those who make $50l-$75k per year (Source: Pew Internet: Mobile Access to Data and Information). My guess is that some of these people may not own a computer or have ready desktop access to the internet, and they make up for that by using mobile data services on their phone.
Read more
