SEPTAlking: voice command SEPTA schedule tool launches [VIDEO DEMO]

A tool that allows users to call in for voice activated SEPTA schedule updates has launched.

Called SEPTAlking and built by Voxeo Labs developer Mark Headd, the tool is particularly suited for those who drive from homes or work to a SEPTA train station and need to confirm train arrivals, departures and delays.

The tool also has text and IM functionality. To give it a try, users can call or text (215) 987-5418 and be prompted for details. The project uses Tropo, a service from Headd’s West Coast-based Voxeo. Currently, it is focused on the regional rail.

Visit the SEPTAlking.com website here.

Headd began developing the project at the Apps for SEPTA hackathon that he helped organize and Technically Philly co-sponsored. He also demoed SEPTAlking to a roomful of amused SEPTA executives at a recent event.

Headd says he plans to continue to develop the project and seeks feedback on improvements or bugs.

SEPTA developer showcase puts realtime schedule apps on display for transit agency officials [VIDEO]

Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.

Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’

By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.

More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.

The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]

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Lavahound: location-based iOS app from Wayne enters crowded ‘discovery’ market

Three entrepreneurs with a hodgepodge of experience hold court around a 4 foot by 6 foot breakfast table in the attic of one of their homes in Wayne. They often keep a bowl of fruit in the middle, where each partner can reach it.

“We’re in a classic startup space,” said Sean McCloskey, the co-founder of Lavahound, a versatile, location-based iOS application built for discovery. Clients, including those they have and those they want to have, tend to be large enterprises hoping to gamify existing experiences, like universities, amusement parks or other institutions seeking an interactive experience around location.

Like Sesame Place, the familiar, family theme park in Bucks County, that is currently an alpha user of Lavahound, around their ‘Spooktacular‘ event that runs to the end of October.

“We’ve created a photo treasure hunt around the park that encourages visitors to find various places of interest and trick or treat stations around the park using their mobile phone,” said McCloskey, 30, who adds that engagement is high among trial users.  “Our app gives visitors a map that pinpoints what to find, a gallery of the images that shift in accordance to where you are, and info related to what you are finding.”

Next, the Lavahound team wants to move into the tourism and education fields, both crowded markets, he said.

Indeed, location-based services and gamification are a hot market nationally right now, a concern, McCloskey said, that doesn’t have him worried because of the sleeker, faster-moving product and the team that surrounds him.

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License to Inspect: two years later, City of Philadelphia L&I API will drive PlanPhilly transparency app

A screenshot of a draft of the License to Inspect tool, built by Azavea for PlanPhilly using the new L&I app. Click to enlarge.

If the deadlines of today are worth more than the deadlines of the past, the City of Philadelphia is due to release before the end of the year the first, most comprehensive agency data API framework in its history. It will power an online tool billed as a giant leap forward in city transparency.

Nearly two years in the making, an online application that allows unheard of data access to the city’s Licenses and Inspections Department — with as much as a year of deep digitized and categorized records to start — will be unveiled by built environment news site PlanPhilly, having been developed by GIS specialty shop Azavea with support from the city’s newly renamed Office of Innovation and Technology and with funding from the William Penn Foundation.

If fast tracked, the project, dubbed ‘License to Inspect,’ could be a signature good government initiative in Mayor Nutter’s reelection bid come November.

More likely, it will land around the new year and the process for the data release — sharing an in-house API to be built upon by a third party — could likely serve as a landmark example for municipal government transparency, a thoughtful, progressive move from a city government trying to raise its standing in the technology community. The trouble, of course, say numerous sources close to the matter, is how long and how much trouble the project took — and what will happen to the API once the app goes live.

Will the L&I data release be a treasure trove of lessons learned to continue the march toward all-agency buy in around data or will it be characterized as enough of a boondoggle as to keep other city department heads wary of the headache?

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PhillyTreeMap.org: crowdsourced census of Philadelphia’s tree canopy

Map rendering of some 180,000 cataloged trees in Philadelphia, via PhillyTreeMap.org.

Philadelphia is crowdsourcing a census of its trees, and, yes, would you mind helping?

Unveiled on Arbor Day during Philly Tech Week, PhillyTreeMap.org is a wiki-inspired web application that allows users who register free to collaborate with the project partners — City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – to map,  inventory and preserve the Philadelphia urban forest. The project was built by local mapping company Azavea.

Nearly 180,000 are already cataloged, though the species and other core details are missing.With guidance from the site, users can ascertain species type, estimate trunk diameter and height and fill in other specifics that will help the coalition of groups to better ascertain what is lacking and what is working in Philadelphia foliage.

PhillyTreeMap is meant to help Parks & Rec with its 30 percent tree canopy goal outlined in Greenworks Philadelphia by engaging residents around tree planting and stewardship, Azavea Project Manager Deb Boyer said during the Green Tech Showcase unveiling. Currently Philadelphia has an average of roughly 20 percent canopy across the city, though some parts have fuller coverage and other parts have far less.

Funding has not yet supported a mobile interface, which would allow users to more easily update entries while at the tree, Boyer said, but the browser experience is a user friendly one. Team members will offer some project oversight in case of false information, but the hope is for Philadelphians to help with this cause, she added.

According to a press release [PDF]: “Azavea built PhillyTreeMap using open source code contributed by the Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco and plans to collaborate with the group on future urban forestry projects.  The development of PhillyTreeMap was supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.”

Visit Philly, Visit Bucks County launch mobile sites, app

Two major tourist agencies of the region are touting new mobile websites and applications integrating destination and direction-driven content.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. has launched the mobile version of VisitPhilly.com, and Visit Bucks County has released iPhone, BlackBerry and Android apps, in addition to their own mobile website.

Something like three quarters of travelers who use smart phones rely on them during trips, better than the 60 percent usage in preparation, according to the January 2011 ‘State of the American Traveler’ [PDF] survey from Destination Analysts. That’s why GPTMC focused on quickly actionable information, says Caroline Bean, who handles national media relations for GPTMC.

“Our site focuses on best practices to best serve people looking for information during their trip,” Bean says, including focuses on GPS-driven maps tied to sightseeing, restaurants and hotels. Direct ticket sales will be an area of growth for the site, she said, being particularly mindful that VisitPhilly.com sees traffic spikes on the weekends.

The trends are similar in Bucks County. The apps, mobile site and text messaging service are “designed to provide immediate access to tourism-related information,” says Visit Bucks County public relations manager Michelle Greco. Their text messaging focus is tied into advertising and marketing programs featuring discounts and coupons. All products are free to use.

Philly 311 web app to be piloted in June, due for public release ‘in next three months’

Screenshots of the 311 app on BlackBerry, featuring the welcome and problem screens. Click to enlarge.

By the summer’s end, Philadelphia 311 will take another big step forward, City Managing Director Rich Negrin announced at the Philly Tech Week Signature Event.

“In the next three months, we’ll see the release of our first 311 [web] app” Negrin told 150 attendees at WHYY, many tweeting the news to a projected Twitterfall, in highlighting what’s new for the non-emergency call center.

The web application represents another, more passive front face to 311, supporting call intake volume — due to surpass three million calls received, Negrin added — and the walk-up service at City Hall.

“It’s not just your granddaddy’s app,” said Rosetta Lue, the director of the non-emergency call center. “You can enter requests, track complaints and have a community calendar with what’s happening. You don’t have to wait for our call center to be open.”

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SEPTA subway iPhone app launches

Patrick Cassidy, the developer behind phillysubway, has a theory about mass transit iPhone applications.

“Transit systems have quirks and you need to be user of the system to write an app for it,” he says.

A SEPTA rider and the lone employee at Caffeine Fish, Cassidy followed up regional rail scheduling application Trainboard with phillysubway, an iPhone app that provides up-to-the-minute subway schedules. Users can hold their iPhone normally for the North/South Broad Street Line, or turn their phone sideways for the (mostly) East/West Market Frankford Line.

A functionality that, Cassidy says, had him fearful that Apple would reject the application form its App Store.

[Disclosure: Caffeine Fish is a Technically Philly advertiser. This post is not part of any advertising package.]

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Mural Guide application finds, details Philly’s ample outdoor art, built with OpenDataPhilly

An iPhone rendering of the Philly Mural Guide, which can be visited on any smart phone or web browser. Click to visit.

OpenDataPhilly.org was unveiled with a roar last Monday as part of Philly Tech Week. But while a catalog of regional data, APIs and applications is a treasure trove to some, it’s a brick wall to many others.

Data, thou art inscrutable.

As a better example of why releasing data is important, two Code for America fellows with help from a third developed and launched the Philadelphia Mural Guide app. Aaron Ogle and John Mertens, with Mjumbe Poe, used the MuralFarm collection of locations, images and other information on the city’s expansive outdoor art, to develop the project. The app received enough attention that Web 2.0 star Tim O’Reilly tweeted its grandeur.

“It’s a web-based application that can be viewed from a mobile device or desktop browser,” says Jeff Friedman, recently named Mayor Nutter’s Manager of Civic Innovation and Participation, noting it also shares details and images of included pieces. “It will locate your position on a map and your proximity to mural artwork in Philadelphia.”

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Code for America Philadelphia fellows start work with City: Video interview

Mjumbe Poe, one of the Code for America Philadelphia fellows, speaks with John Mertens looking on. Photo by Nicholas Vadala

Aaron Ogle was quite taken with Philadelphia’s first Deputy Mayor for Public Safety.

“Man, you need a Youtube channel,” Ogle told Everett Gillison in a meeting.

Ogle, 30, is something of the leader of the seven-pack of Code for America fellows that parachuted into City Hall earlier this month.

Ogle, a former developer for local GIS shop Azavea, is one of two Philly natives in this, the inaugural year for an experimental program that offers chosen cities a team of coders for a year to create open source products that make government more efficient, transparent or ideally both.

In January, Ogle and Mjumbe Poe, 27, who was formerly doing contract code work for the University of Pennsylvania, landed in San Francisco to meet their new teammates and more than a dozen other young developers who would be working for the other inaugural CFA cities Washington D.C., Boston and Seattle.

After a month of training in relevant skills, style and city government, all of the fellows are being put up for the month of February in their respective cities. In March, all the fellows will make the pilgrimage back to the CFA headquarters in San Francisco where they will all presumably hold hands, share what they’ve learned and by September have an alpha version of some kind of application.

That’s what brought Ogle, Poe and the rest of the team in the gaze of Gillison.

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