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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, September 29, 2009
Mass. to hold transportation conference, dev challenge
By Rodney H. Brown
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Bay State officials are looking for help to bring the public transportation sector into the digital world, with the announcement today of a new conference and a coding challenge.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation will host a free Developers Conference on Nov. 14, 2009, at the Tang Center at MIT in Cambridge. Starting today, however, the EOT is launching the 2009 EOT Developers Challenge, which will encourage developers to create both applications and data visualizations about transportation on the MBTA. The apps will be submitted to the EOT and ideally released to the public, officials said.
The two top submissions will receive a CharlieCard valid for one year of free travel on the MBTA, according to EOT officials.
Within the past few weeks, Massachusetts-based companies Sparkfish Creative and Wonderland Development launched iPhone applications to help users navigate the MBTA system. And an application called UniBus is already using transportation data for all state agencies, creating a statewide transit scheduler for the iPhone.
According to Transportation Secretary James A. Aloisi, Jr., both the conference and the challenge are modeled on the Apps for Democracy program, a similar effort in Washington D.C., which returned 47 iPhone, Facebook and web applications to the city.
Applications developed for the Challenge can be submitted through Nov. 9, 2009.
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