Blognation

15/09/2007 : Blognation

JustRoutes is a Dublin Visitor’s Best Friend.

Vincent Glennon is responsible for the very useful UseAMap site. He seems to specialise in building very smart single-function sites that the big guys will never do. His latest mapping application, which he launched at DemoBar, is JustRoutes. It provides information on public transport routes in Dublin via two simple clicks on a Google Map: “Starting point” and “Destination point”.

I could have done with this many times in the past couple of months and I’m sure that applies to anyone who travels to the capital on a semi-regular basis. Heck I know plenty of people who live in Dublin and who only know the bus routes from their house to work.

When he was trialling it, I suggested that he ensure it works well on mobiles as I could imagine that being a popular use case. Unfortunately I didn’t have much luck with either Opera and Opera Mini 4 on my Nokia N70. The maps aren’t really readable and the text entry interface didn’t like my locations.

Vincent has also implemented the UseAMap idea here where any route you request is given the equivalent of a TinyURL. Another nice touch is the cost estimate for the journey.

Hopefully when Google Maps stops being a bad joke outside of the large cities here, he will add national bus and rail routes. If he included private operators too, that might be a route to a revenue stream. I’m not sure what his monetization plans are but the whole area of local advertising could be a possibility. Alternatively, CIE (the bus/rail operator) could show uncharacteristic commercial sense and buy it from him or invest in it.