codesofaJust another WordPress weblog

There are friends and there are friends..

If you’ve ever used “GottaGo“, you might have experienced it from time to time: The stations around you disappear on the “Closest” Screen.

Why does this happen? Let me explain.

So far, I used the nearby search from Google to get a list of stations around you. Fairly simple. But.. SBB.ch does i.e. not understand “Bäckeranlage” but “Zürich, Bäckeranlage” which makes sense. But Google only provides “Bäckeranlage” – not so nice to map here. I’ve seen a comment in the AppStore from someone who noted this problem.. And he is right. This gave me a hard time.. [The fact that I'm in the exam session was no helpful either but nevermind :)]

How was the problem solved so far? With reverse geocoding. With the (great) API provided by geonames.org, I could more or less flatten this problems out. More or less? Yes. In the logs (Yes, sorry, I keep logfiles, but it’s to improve the query results, nothing more. I don’t see any IDs or sth. Just from where to where you are going and what method was successful for your query) I saw that a lot of requests for simple station names had to be handled by the “Google Fallback” – which is obviously not intended. This “Google Fallback” should catch up, when/if you search for an address or a POI (like Subway Restaurant Zurich). Why is that? Because the city mapping from Swiss Postal Service and SBB are quite different. I.e. there is a “Klein-Basel” in their database, where there is only a “Basel” on the SBB side. Then there are various ambiguous names, like “Bern / Liebefeld” which is also no hit on SBB.ch .. I guess you see the point.

Summary: Google returns list a stations which do not have the same name on SBB.ch which cannot alway be corrected because the reverse geocoder is not always “right”.

What do you do in your darkest hours? Yes, you ask your friends. There are friends. I’d call them “GottaGo”’s Baywatch ;) I was looking for a solution. Since we plan to release the next iteration very soon and we need a lot of work to do. (Btw.: we is me and Stefan Sicher from sichr.com who is working on the new design like a crazy cow ;) – and no, that design from the last blogpost is not from him, that’s just a mock-design I used to illustrate the layout)

Again – solution. I asked the guys over at local.ch again to help me out. Guess what – they did. They didn’t even say “Yes, we will look into it” – no. Just “Yes, we do it. Just say what you need so I can do it _before_ holidays”. Really – how awesome is this? This will require a few more Horsepower to be squeezed out of my dear “gonzo” but it’s a real breath of fresh air – the light at the end of the tunnel ;)

So you might wonder, what they will provide me.. A lot. First of all: Station-names as on SBB.ch (really exactly the same) together with coordinates (WGS coordinates, they used CH1903 so far). Together with their superfast services and customized XML interface, this will free us from bloated information we don’t really need and exact information we really need.

Then there is autocomplete. I was really worried about that.. (Really really worried. I set this up on another server so I could do it with a different IP-Address in case SBB.ch would block this). I got full permission and a customized API to do autocomplete stuff on local.ch .. Again: superfast! (I know, SBB.ch does a lot more computing for that stuff, but it was really slow :))

As I read these lines, I wanted to tell Joel to bake a big cake so I could give it to the local team. For all those who asked me to open a Paypal account for donations or sth: abandon search.ch and use local.ch from now on! ;) that would result in a win – win situation for all of us :)

Again: I just want to thank you guys over at local.ch, namely Vasile, Patrice, Ebi and Joel for your effort. I hope the users will appreciate it as much as I do :)

Comments (0) | Share It »
Filed under: GottaGo, Information, Tech, iPhone on August 22, 2008 at 12:06 am by marc.
Tags: GottaGo, iPhone, nearby, sbb, sdk, stations

Whatever will be, will be..

Well.. Since you folks are really into changes these days, I’ll provide you with a little sneak-preview of what’s coming in the v0.1.0 – Annapurna release.

First off: Language support. GottaGo will be available in english, german, french and italian. And as you see: A totally new UI. (The green disappeared! ;))

Then we have had one request to include Cabs.. Well, since I don’t want to waste my time on cars, I asked the guys over at local to help me a bit here. Thanks to the help of Tobias Ebnöther and Joel Bez of the local.ch team at Liip, this works like a charm.

And last but certainly not least, we have autocompletion. That’s the reason why the UI changed so much..

 
These are just the most significant changes. There are way more changes that you will notice. (Like track number.. But there will be _no_ track number for Zurich HB since this information is not available to me. (Try it on sbb.ch).

However, I cannot tell you about the exact release date. I’m having some exams the next two weeks, so I won’t have time to work a lot on this, but since I canceled release 0.0.2 (Dhaulagiri), this one might come around that time..

I want to thank you all out there for giving me many flowers and a few complaints. Makes working on this a little easier :)

The last few days, I’ve been browsing through the AppStore and I think it’s pretty cool, that 2 of the top 3 apps are not games in Switzerland. And as of the time of writing, neither is the number 1 app. In a lot of other AppStores, the games lead the rankings :) This might also change in the swiss AppStore in a few hours, but it’s cool that it takes a while..

Comments (3) | Share It »
Filed under: Information, Tech, iPhone on August 11, 2008 at 3:08 am by marc.
Tags: 0.0.2, appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, next-release, sdk

Well.. here we go. In the AppStore

Whew.. Funny things happen, when you’re off for a day without internet connection. `GottaGo’ is out.

(In case you missed it: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=285851523&mt=8 )

I got a few e-mails and private messages that – I think – contain questions that some of  you may care about.

• Is this an official SBB App?
  • Nope.
• If it’s not official, how long do you think this will stay?
  • I think the few queries this App does and costs in computing power will be compensated by folks like you who use public transit. (Compensate as in help to improve the environment and pay your trips..)
• Why isn’t `this’ included as well?
  • Because it is coming soon! :) No really: The interest of this app is to help. I got GREAT feedback from the beta testers (great as in helpful) which improved this App a lot! And I hope I get helpful feedback from a few more users.
• You did a great job.
  • Thanks. But 70% of this goes to my testers because this app would be pretty.. uhm.. not useful.. without them :) Thanks a lot! (I’m still looking for testers btw.)
  • Another big piece of this cake goes to Liip (which gave me time to work on this – you see, a great company to work for) and Stefan Sicher (who did the fine art)
  • No this is not a big crying scene like “I wanna thank my mum, my cat, my toilet…” :)
• Will this stay free?
  • Forever.
• Why is it all in English?
  • I don’t know :) Actually, Apple needs at least english, but I haven’t had any interest in doing it in 2 languages. And I’m sorry to have missed this point. This will be improved in future releases.

Besides: I hope you enjoy the app. If not -> https://jira.liip.ch/browse/GGO (I’m especially interested in the guy who got directed through his town instead of walking to the station where this happened..)

Comments (0) | Share It »
Filed under: Information, Tech, iPhone on August 7, 2008 at 3:12 pm by marc.
Tags: appstore, GottaGo, iPhone, release

A swiss public transit API (SBB and Google..)

Here we go.. After weeks of going back and forth between a crappy API (sbb.ch) with exact schedule and a nice API with wrong schedule (google.com), I finally merged them into one.

What are the capabilities of this API? Let’s make an example.

Given you entered from = “Feldstrasse 133, Zürich” and to = “Bern”.

• It then checks sbb.ch first – No hit.
• Then it checks google.com, which will return you a schedule with the next transit station from the address “feldstrasse+133, Zürich”

Ok, this is not a big deal.

In GottaGo, we often use (or almost everytime) the coordinates of a station. Let’s make another example.

Query: from=Triemli[8.495521,47.368052,0] and to=”Feldstrasse 133″.

The coordinates are then reverse geocoded, so that we get a city name.. Which is “Zürich” in this case.

• The API will first check sbb.ch for “Zürich, Triemli” to “Feldstrasse 133″, which will be no hit.
• It then checks sbb.ch for “Zürich, Triemli” to “Zürich, Feldstrasse 133″.

  Note that the city is also added to the other parameter since we had no hit in the first place and the city name did not yet occur in the second parameter “Feldstrasse 133″. But no hit again..

• Then it checks google.com for “Zürich, Triemli” to “Feldstrasse 133″, which will be no hit, since there are a few more “Feldstrasse”s around in Switzerland.
• Ok, now the last resort: Check google with “Zürich, Triemli” to “Zürich, Feldstrasse 133″ – Ahhh, finally a hit :)

Why all this? Because of POI and address-book search.

SBB.ch doesn’t really provide a proper API for using POIs and addresses. And google doesn’t provide the comfort of saying “Fribourg” is the Mainstation of “Fribourg” and not the center of Fribourg, and the schedule is sometimes wrong, especially during holidays.

This results in a comfortable API which we can use to make also very simples queries like: from “Current Location” to “Liip” in `GottaGo’.

The URL to this API? http://couch.codesofa.com/api/transit.xml?from=station[longitude,latitude,0]; station2[longitude,latitude,0]&to=station3; station4[longitude,latitude,0]

(The coordinates are optional, and you can enter as many stations as you like, separated by “;”)

Eg: couch.codesofa.com/api/transit.xml?from=Triemli[8.495521,47.368052,0]&to=Bern

Btw.: Latest Beta of `GottaGo’ is out. (An iPhone app for swiss public transit). If you want a preview, see: http://liip.to/applyforbeta

Comments (8) | Share It »
Filed under: Information, Okapi, Tech on August 3, 2008 at 11:39 am by marc.
Tags: api, google, Okapi, php, public, sbb, transit