Open Data Ottawa

Dataspotting - Ottawa Transit Data Day

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:33:07 -0400

Ottawa OC Transpo static (GTFS) and real-time (API) data for the bus system is open for your use.

On June 2, 2012 OC Transpo’s staff will also be open for your questions and ideas.

Want access to Presto card data? Have a great concept for visualising OC Transpo’s giant trove of daily bus location data? (Complete bus location records are downloaded and stored at the end of every day… #bigdata anyone?) Have an idea for LRT open data? Want to make a cool digital bus arrival sign and gain acclaim? Have an idea for something amazing that the API doesn’t quite do yet?

Then register at http://transit-data-yow.eventbrite.com/ and come collaborate with us at City Hall.

La Ville de Montréal - Le mouvement d’ouverture des...

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:44:01 -0400

La Ville de Montréal - Le mouvement d’ouverture des données d’administrations publiques vise à promouvoir le savoir et l’innovation grâce au partage d’informations. En ouvrant ses données, une organisation publique permet qu’elles soient réutilisées à différentes fins.

"We saw an opportunity to take an experiment done in Philadelphia and apply it in Denver ahead of our..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:47:10 -0400

“We saw an opportunity to take an experiment done in Philadelphia and apply it in Denver ahead of our summer hackathon to generate a test case for simple engagement methods and generate a large amount of data. In partnership with OpenPlans, we are proud to announce Denver’s Beautiful Streets.”

- Introducing Denver’s Beautiful Streets

Congrats to PlaceMatters and OpenPlans on a successful and promising redeployment of Beautiful Streets, a civic app aimed at generating crowdsourced data about the urban environment.

According to the organizers, there are some very easy instructions to set it up in Heroku, which should help any others interested in redeploying the app. Any takers?

(via codeforamerica)

Helsinki Public Transport Visualized (YouTube)

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:53:53 -0400

Helsinki Public Transport Visualized (YouTube)

open source code for OC Transpo real-time transit data

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:22:25 -0400

iPhone app that won Ottawa apps contest - http://github.com/titanous/whereismybus by @titanous
Android app built using Google/MIT App Inventor - http://github.com/sladea/OCTimer by @adaminottawa
web app - http://threebit.net/app/code.zip by @ODonnell_K

Please let us know if there are others.

Stats on the use of OC Transpo’s real-time transit data,...

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:15:11 -0400

Stats on the use of OC Transpo’s real-time transit data, via @rob_giggey

Société de transport de Laval - transit app contest - $10k

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:37:58 -0400

Société de transport de Laval - transit app contest - $10k:

«Let’s Develop Together!» Contest

Here’s your chance to win one of four prizes worth a total of $10,000: Develop a mobile application or submit an idea or concept for a mobile application. Contest entry deadline: May 31, 2012.

Information in real time is now available!

Helsinki real-time transit map

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:31:31 -0400

Helsinki real-time transit map

hackerboat, hackerbus, hackertrain

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:22:43 -0400

Rewired State had The Boat that Hacked TV (and here’s a video of a great hack from that event)

Coming up:

May 23, 2012 - « L’Autobus des créateurs » - Montreal

“L’Autobus des créateurs est un espace créatif mobile qui fera le tour de l’île de Montréal le 23 mai 2012. Lors de ce trajet d’une demi-journée, des développeurs intéressés à trouver des solutions créatives aux problèmes de transport à Montréal embarqueront dans l’Autobus des créateurs avec pour mission de proposer un projet web ou mobile. Une fois arrivés à destination, les participants devront être en mesure de commencer la mise en œuvre du projet.”

Rough translation: the hackerbus (or maybe makerbus) is a mobile creative space that will go around the Island of Montreal May 23, 2012. During the half-day trip, developers interested in finding creative solutions to transportation problems in Montreal will travel on the hackerbus, with their mission being to propose a web or mobile project. Once they have arrived at their destination, the participants should be ready to start working on the project.

June 16, 2012 - The Hackatrain - Chicago

Web developers and designers will solve a transportation problem building software while riding the Chicago Brown Line. On Saturday the teams will meet in the Hackacave, a strategic downtown location and wait turns to ride and hack in the train. The Hackatrain will ride most of the day and teams are expected to complete their apps while riding the train.

Hmm, what should we do for Ottawa Transit Data Day? Double-decker databus, anyone?

Transport informatics

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:59:00 -0400

Transport informatics:

The blog post Transport informatics (from City of Sound) gives a comprehensive overview of the many different types of things you can do with transportation data. Map visualisations are a common theme. (The post is four years old, from April 2008, but still very relevant.)

Who needs celebrities when you have hot open data? 24 Hours...

Thu, 03 May 2012 11:18:07 -0400

Who needs celebrities when you have hot open data?

24 Hours Ottawa cover story - Data opens transit info to all.

Also in the Ottawa Sun as Open data revolutionizing transit.

Featuring Open Data Ottawa’s own @alox

Thanks to @ottawasunkroche for the story.

Pioneering German visualisation monitors train delays in real time

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Pioneering German visualisation monitors train delays in real time:

Guardian DataBlog: “German newspaper Suddeutsche has partnered with data specialists OpenDataCity to produce a visualisation that marries aesthetics with practicality. Today they launched an English version for us. Zugmonitor is a live, graphic representation of train journeys in Germany, providing information on each train’s itinerary and the details of any delay. There is also an interactive timeline, allowing you to watch previous days’ travel play out. The data behind the graphic comes from Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway company.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/apr/12/train-germany-map

See the site directly at http://zugmonitor.sueddeutsche.de/ (click english version in the centre-right, next to the map). Follow the site on Twitter: @zugmonitor

Although OC Transpo doesn’t provide this kind of real-time information for their entire system, they do have a very historical database; we’re hoping they will open it for this kind of analysis.

Thanks to Councillor Mathieu Fleury for this video about an app...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:02:33 -0400

Thanks to Councillor Mathieu Fleury for this video about an app that will use the OC Transpo Real-Time GPS open data.

Design Principles (UK Govern Digital Services)

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:59:47 -0400

Design Principles (UK Govern Digital Services):

nomada:

Listed below are our design principles and examples of how we’ve used them so far. These build on, and add to, our original 7 digital principles.

Start with needs*

Do less

Design with data

Do the hard work to make it simple

Iterate. Then iterate again.

Build for inclusion

Understand context

Build digital services, not websites

Be consistent, not uniform

Make things open: it makes things better

Join Edward Ocampo-Gooding tomorrow at the Creative Commons...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:50:12 -0400

Join Edward Ocampo-Gooding tomorrow at the Creative Commons Salon Ottawa. Alex and MB will also be on hand, come by and say Hi.

Droidhack! To build an OC Transpo app for Android

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:47:05 -0400

DROIDHACK!

Saturday, April 14, 2012, 10:30 AM

Macadamian Offices
165 Rue Wellington, Gatineau, Quebec

http://www.meetup.com/ottawaandroid/events/57212832/

OC Transpo for Android - try to get an Android OC Transpo app out before the end of the day. This is open to everyone of course!

For more information:

@chris_saunders
@ottawaandroid

bus applications, less than a week after data release

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:19:00 -0400

UPDATE: Just a note that these are specifically apps that use the March 22, 2012 OC Transpo release of real-time GPS location API. There are many other OC Transpo apps out there that use just the schedule open data. ENDUPDATE

Mobile sites (should work on any web browser / smartphone):

http://threebit.net/app/stop.php by Kevin O’Donnell (@ODonnell_K)

http://thebluefactor.com/rtbus/ by An-Min (@thebluefactor)

http://www.ocbustracker.com/ by Sean Kibbee (@sdkibb)

iPhone apps

Bus Buddy Ottawa 2.0 (in the app store) @busbuddyottawa

and there is of course the official iPhone app from OC Transpo - My Transit

Android apps

OC Transpo Tracker by Jean-Francois Bibeau (@jfbibeau)

Please let us know about any others!