TrafikantenToday the application Trafikanten finally got released for iPhone. It is one of the few Norwegian applications released for the iPhone, and is more or less only interesting for owners of this phone living (or traveling) in the Oslo area. The application brings you real-time departure information for public transit (bus, tram and subway). Simply select departure information for the nearest stops with GPS, or search the online stop database. The application is a perfect example on two of the biggest web trends of 2008, geotagging and geosearch, and it is also quite usable for those of us that have an iPhone without GPS.

Lets go a little bit deeper and look in to what makes this application possible. The public transport in Oslo are reporting via GPS where they are located, and it started with the stations and stops telling you exactly when the next bus could be expected. This real-time data was decided made publicly available as XML files, so that others could use them. The idea behind making this data publicly available is for others to follow:

The more information the public can get about when and where the buses are, the easier it will be for you and me to use public transport. The consumers and the environment will benefit from this kind of openness.

Trafikanten for iPhone is not the first service that makes use of the real-time data for Oslo’s public transport. A great example, that I have been using up to now,  is the excellent st.d6.no, which gives users of the iPhone and other phones with modern browsers a very good service with real-time traffic data. The Web site remembers your searches, so you can set up your favorites. The service is fast and has a nice design.

Opera Software has also made a widget for their browsers (Flickr photo), but the coolest of service of them all is by far Trafikanten for iPhone. Sadly, for now only available in Norwegian. Perhaps a future version could have support for English, German, French and Spanish? Then the application could be used for tourists as well!

For those of you who only have the simplest of mobile phone, the service is also available as WAP: http://wap.trafikanten.no/#RealTime

Other schedules are also planned added to Trafikanten’s real-time service SIS (information in Norwegian), as Trafikanten is working with Jernbaneverket to get train information into SIS. Sadly no date yet.