Will Boston University students bother? Will this really take-off? Please do post your reactions?
Boston.com had an interesting
article that caught my eye.
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BOSTON MAYOR Thomas Menino, a notorious technophobe, looks at Chris Osgood and Nigel Jacob - his two-man research and development team - with a mixture of pride and mystification. Menino appreciates their skills, but he is clueless about what they are up to half the time.
Osgood, 33, and Jacob, 35, create computer applications to improve the delivery of city services. In October, they launched Citizens Connect, an iPhone application that allows users to alert city officials to graffiti, potholes, street light failures and other urban aggravations. Snap a picture on a phone equipped with GPS, hit send, and let the nearest public works yard worry about it. Other cities host similar applications that make it easier for tech-savvy residents to report urban eyesores. But Boston may be the first city that transfers that data directly from the citizen to the DPW yard, without a stopover in the City Hall bureaucracy. By June, the application should be available for Android smartphones.
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what new features and functions would you recommend?
I would recommend an application that alerts users to where exactly each and every part of the public transportation system is located in real time.
ReplyDeleteI write this because I stood in the rain waiting for a bus today, decided that it would be easier to walk, and then the bus passed me about 5 minutes later. Perhaps I could have used my iPhone app to show me that a bus was approaching.
This shouldn't be too difficult or expensive, with several GPS tracking devices available on the market.
I would recommend expanding this app to include the major highways that surround Boston. Currently BUMP only supports the actual city of Boston. Just 2 weeks ago I was driving north on I-93 and passed an enormous metal belt buckle in the middle of the lane (the kind that truckers use to hold cargo in place). It was so large that had a car hit it, an accident definitely would have happened. Because BUMP doesn't cover the suburbs, I had to call 911 and let them know about it. Hopefully the time they spent with me on the phone did not hinder a real emergency call getting through.
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