The thing about useful stuff is

London tube unearthed Friday, January 09, 2009

A London Underground 1995 Stock train pulls in...

Image via WikipediaDescribing itself as the tube travellers bible, I stumbled across Metazone's London tube site last night by accident whilst looking to find the nearest tube to a meeting venue.

In one part of the site, they've overlaid the tube lines on a google map which highlights the astonishing meandering routes some of these lines follow, but more practically as you mouse over the map useful tube information is revealed.

You can check it out here.

Labels: Google, Google Map, Google Maps, mashup

posted by John Wilson @ 8:40 AM Permanent Link ,

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Google mobile maps adds public transport directions Friday, June 06, 2008

For anyone with a Blackberry or newish mobile phone, Google's mobile maps application is an absolute must-have application and best of all it's free.

I'm regular travel around London to attend meetings and having a easily accessible "A-Z" on the phone courtesy of Google maps is invaluable. I'm fortunate to have a Blackberry model that has GPS, which means I can also locate exactly where I am relative to my destination directly on the map. If the GPS signal is not good enough to get a location fix or if your phone doesn't have GPS, Google maps can identify your approximate location using mobile phone cell data. The service can even provides directions for you to follow to get to your destination - perfect for walking or driving.

Until now Google maps has lacked one feature - public transport guidance explaining how to get between point A and B of the sort provided by the Transport for London [TfL] website. As a consequence, I either have to use Tfl mobile site which isn't bad or head off to the nearest tube station. In release 2.2.0, Google have addressed this and now provide public transport information for Greater London directly within Google Maps. Very easy to install and use.

Go for it.

Labels: blackberry, Google Maps, GPS

posted by John Wilson @ 8:33 AM Permanent Link ,

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User heaven on a Blackberry Thursday, April 24, 2008

I confess to being a blackberry fan and have used one for about 5 years, finding it indispensable. For the last few years, I've also been free of the shackles of a large corporate IT department and hence able to determine what gets installed on my device [8820].

However, I've found relatively few applications worthy of installing other than
- the superb Google maps for mobile, which integrates well with the device's GPS capability, notwithstanding Google maps inherent capability to provide approximate location data via mobile phone cell information
- Gmail for blackberry which offers me a backup in case problems arise with the T-mobile blackberry email as well as to access old emails

Whilst I added Opera mini browser, I almost never have cause to use it, finding the native browser being adequate in most cases. This allows me access to all of my internet services when I'm on the move.

As for the Facebook blackberry application, it was installed and quickly uninstalled, matching my waning interest in that social network.

Lately, it has been great to see an increasing number of applications being developed for data synchronisation with the blackberry to the "cloud". The consequences of losing the device and related data has always been a concern to me.

For instance, Google recently released a free blackberry calendar synch application, allowing your device calendar to be directly synchronised with Google calendar. I'm not using it because I'm happy with my alternate configuration that I described here. Obviously, many corporate users will have real-time synch of their calendar over the air with their Exchange server, but very handy for SMEs.

Yesterday, I read about a blackberry synchronisation application for Remember the Milk, which is a task manager that also integrates with Gmail via a Firefox extension. Sadly this is a paid for application.

I was also excited to come across TellMe's offering. A Microsoft subsidiary, and only operating in the USA at present, its' blackberry application provides a voice interface to a location based search service e.g. find local services. My interest related to a start-up I dealt with a few years ago who were focussed on exactly this space but whose ambitions were inhibited by the widespread absence of GPS enabled devices and cell data. Right idea, but ahead of its time in infrastructure terms.

The sad thing, as ever, is that many corporate blackberry users are denied access to many of these superb offerings because of IT department inertia or paranoia. If you don't have google maps as a minimum on your blackberry you should definitely complain.