iPhone Web Apps Using InfoConnect

I am well over­due to post about about this project we have been work­ing on since the begin­ning of the year. We were involved in the launch of a site called Info­Con­nect by NZTA (previ­ously Tran­sit New Zealand).

This explains it best:

Info­Con­nect is an initia­tive to help ensure road users have access to timely and accu­rate road condi­tion information.

Info­Con­nect is the desti­na­tion for devel­op­ers and compa­nies want­ing to access veri­fied High­way Info data program­mat­i­cally in order to fill a niche market by produc­ing appro­pri­ate infor­ma­tion chan­nels for the trav­el­ling public.

High­way Info includes state high­way road and traf­fic infor­ma­tion, webcam cover­age in Auck­land, Welling­ton and Christchurch, planned road works, unplanned road closures and delays, maps, and holi­day traf­fic information.

Essen­tially the goal is open up the data avail­able within NZTA to third party devel­op­ers and get them using it in a way that is going to help us all on the state high­ways around the coun­try. This issue affect many New Zealan­ders and even some­thing as simple as being able to check out which route to take home in rush hour is some­thing that would be really help­ful to many people. In winter, partic­u­larly in the Central North Island and South Island, this infor­ma­tion is quite crit­i­cal. Believe me I know, having driven through a bliz­zard just last month in Otago!

As part of the project, we have devel­oped a couple of web apps for the iPhone to try and give other devel­op­ers a taste of what is avail­able and what they can do. We devel­oped two applications:

iCam.markerstudio.com

This allows you to browse through the avail­able traf­fic web cams and view them on your iPhone. These are static images, rather than stream­ing video, however, they will update auto­mat­i­cally every 60 seconds. Handy if you are not sure which route to take to the airport or to go home. Thanks to Justin for help­ing me with this one and coming up with the way to do the image refresh within the limi­ta­tions of the iPhone browser.

iTREIS.markerstudio.com

TREIS is the system where NZTA record all major road events that affect the national high­ways. This could include weather related issues such as snow caus­ing a road to be closed, or sched­uled events such as road works. They also issue general warn­ings for both the North and South Island.

As you will only be able to view these on an iPhone I have put together a movie that shows you how they work. If you do have an iPhone, please go to the above URL’s in Safari.

I’m inter­ested in feed­back, and am plan­ning for us to build these into one inte­grated native iPhone appli­ca­tion, which would be more power­ful, as you could take advan­tage of the GPS capa­bil­ity. Please post your ideas and comments via this blog if you can? I am partic­u­larly inter­ested to know if you think you would pay for this application?

If you are a devel­oper, please check out Info­Con­nect and sign up so you can see what is on offer. Neither API is partic­u­larly compli­cated. I wrote the devel­oper docu­men­ta­tion, so if you have any ques­tions or feed­back on that, please let me know.

Tech­no­rati Tags: api, info­con­nect, nzta, tran­sit