Bus Monster

Google Transit expands

2006-09-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Today, Google expanded their bus trip planning system, Google Transit, from only working with Portland to include a number of cities, including Seattle. Brandon and I had worked on a similar system for Seattle a while back, though we've had our hands full with other things for a while now. Maybe we'll see what we can do to get it out soon.

Though I haven't tried it out myself since I am now down in San Francisco working on a brand new startup, I've been told that it can sometimes give silly results, like walking across the Aurora Bridge (yikes!).

So congrats to Google for getting multiple cities working--quite a task, I know. Here's to hoping the quality of the trips will soon be as good as what the local government sites provide.

Also, I'll try and start posting again here. =)

Site back up - Temporary fix

2005-10-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

Okie dokie, the site's back up with a temporary fix that should be good for now.

And now, back to work on the improvements.

The site is currently down for maintenance

2005-10-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yep. It's sad. I had to take the site down because I was being a *bit* slow to move the existing site to Google's great new API. Don't worry, this just means that I've had more time to work on the brand new features for the new busmonster coming soon!

And kudos to Google for the heads-up. Thanks, guys!

Ok, back to my day job.

Back in the saddle

2005-07-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Welp, I'm back from Where 2.0, caught up at work, and back into development on busmonster. Now that Google has released it's official Google Maps API, I'm working on remaking the bus monster (a) to be fully compliant with their TOS, (b) to make the bus monster more robust, and (c) to add new features!

As it is, Satellite maps are not currently working due to Google Maps phasing out old images and such (that I currently rely on).

Also, I might be working on a version of busmonster for another city. We'll see how that pans out, maybe. I'll let you know which hypothetical city this is when it possibly comes closer to completion. perhaps.

Along with the more stability offered by the upcoming v2 of busmonster, it will have added features that will beat the pants off of what's here now. Stay tuned...

=)

Where 2.0

2005-06-27T23:23:00.000-07:00

So, for any of you attending the Where 2.0 conference in SF this week, maybe I'll bump into you. I'm headed there tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to meeting all sorts of interesting people. I've been cooking up some more improvements to the bus monster, which I'll be finishing up and putting out on the site when I get back.

If you have any problems with the bus monster while I'm gone, please email me and let me know--I probably won't be as obsessive about checking the site to make sure its running while I'm out of town, so hopefully all the emails I get will be things like "ooo! busmonster is cool!" rather than "booo! busmonster died!" we'll see...

Anyway, enjoy.

images not showing up?

2005-06-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

My uncle noticed that you need to make sure you have third-party images enabled for bus monster to work, since all of the map and satellite images are not provided by me, but Google.

Now with Traffic Advisories and Permalinks

2005-06-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who has tried out the bus monster, and double thanks to everyone who has given me feedback or funds. I wanted to thank you by adding some new features to the busmonster, so here they are!

Traffic Advisories -- With the help of Greg Sadetsky, who made the first (that I know of) Google Maps Traffic hack, I was able to find the Traffic.com and Yahoo! traffic information and add it to the Traffic Conditions section of the site. You should now see any accidents or construction going on in and around Seattle.

Permalinks -- I got a lot of feedback about the usefulness of having this feature. Now you can bookmark almost any view on the site, and come back to it with a single click! Extremely useful for your daily commute, for instance. You can even permalink arrival time bubbles and traffic cam bubbles.

Auto-centering on routes -- I was browsing blog entries about bus monster, and found Mike's comments here. He's right, auto-centering on routes is a good thing, so I added it. =)

If you have any problems with the new features (or anything on the site), please let me know. Thanks for using bus monster!

Fun with Google Maps Polylines (aka, BlueShape)

2005-06-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

I just posted this over at the google groups "Google Maps" group, too.

http://tinyurl.com/a5god

Ok, so for all of you who are curious about polylines, here's some code
that should demonstrate its use pretty succinctly (take a look at the .js files). And while having
fun, too. Woo!

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/csmoak/blueshape/draw.html

This is a small javascript program I made to show off how to use
maplinedraw, but the polyline decoding/encoding should be pretty
useful, in general (meaning, with IE's vml, as well). Here are some
more examples of what you can make with BlueShape:

http://tinyurl.com/dcbww
http://tinyurl.com/73czs
http://tinyurl.com/cqm53

I know this works with Firefox and that it doesn't work with IE. I
don't know about other browsers. Please let me know of any firefox
problems you have. Thanks.

- chris

not working for you?

2005-06-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out that if you have the "always remember password" firefox extension from roachfiend.com installed, busmonster (and google maps, in general) will not work. Just so you know.

While I'm on the subject of problems with busmonster, let me remind you that this site *just* went live and is bound to have problems over the next few days/weeks. Also, I realize there are some user interface issues that I'll hopefully be improving upon over time.

The first interface issue I've noticed is that people like to append their search queries with "Seattle, WA". This is handled poorly by the Metro's Trip Planner (even though it's still awesome!), so I'll be making some checks before sending a query off to the Trip Planner.

If you notice any bugs or if you have any suggestions, please feel free to email me.

Silly emergency reboots...

2005-06-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

So, I wake up (just recently) to find that the server bus monster is hosted on did an "emergency reboot" at 7:30 this morning, and the database did not come back up, partially disabling the site. Sorry for the inconvenience to anyone using the site this morning. Everything should be working now, and hopefully the problem is fixed for the future. =)

Bus Monster goes CHOMP

2005-06-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

So, I'm gonna try out this blog thing to keep updates for Bus Monster, which I just released today. Today's goal is for it to stay up all day long. =)

www.busmonster.com. Enjoy.