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I sorta hear you but not the best example since transportation data benefits greatly from geo-locating which works much better in apps.

by pbreit 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago
There is one good transportation app on Android, it's called Google Maps. It covers 90% of use cases. I absolutely hate that my city decided not to give Google the data (second-hand intel tells that it's because public transport provider signed some exclusivity deal with a local startup, which sole raison d'être is that the data is not on Google Maps). In a perfect world, city transportation data and transport apps would be independent, so that you could use your favourite app in all cities. Generalizing from that, the problem with apps is one of interoperability - everyone tries to lock you in their shitty app gaining little, but taking away huge benefits that could be created by combining data sources from different parties. As it is now, companies are run by control freaks who don't care that great things are created by not trying to capture all the value you create.
- yoz-y 11y ago
  Sometimes it is not the city's fault. In my town the data is publicly free to use for commercial and non commercial purposes. Google does not give a damn about it though (I live in a fairly large town in France)
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    There's a difference between serving free data (likely in some idiosyncratic format on some idiosyncratic schedule) and doing the Maps integration oneself. I see many French cities at [0]. I doubt that Google has developers assigned to each one. It seems more likely that each one has its own people using a Maps API to keep Maps transit data current. [0] https://www.google.com/landing/transit/cities/index.html https://www.google.com/landing/transit/cities/index.html
davidbanham 11y ago
I've never had a problem with browser geolocation via navigator.geolocation. What issues are you seeing?
- pbreit 11y ago
  On iOS it's substantially clunkier for the user. They have to keep agreeing to the coo popup every time they visit the site. And there's not background geo-locating. It's really not even comparable.

I sorta hear you but not the best example since transportation data benefits greatly from geo-locating which works much better in apps.

by pbreit 11y ago

I sorta hear you but not the best example since transportation data benefits greatly from geo-locating which works much better in apps.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

There is one good transportation app on Android, it's called Google Maps. It covers 90% of use cases. I absolutely hate that my city decided not to give Google the data (second-hand intel tells that it's because public transport provider signed some exclusivity deal with a local startup, which sole raison d'être is that the data is not on Google Maps). In a perfect world, city transportation data and transport apps would be independent, so that you could use your favourite app in all cities. Generalizing from that, the problem with apps is one of interoperability - everyone tries to lock you in their shitty app gaining little, but taking away huge benefits that could be created by combining data sources from different parties. As it is now, companies are run by control freaks who don't care that great things are created by not trying to capture all the value you create.

yoz-y 11y ago
Sometimes it is not the city's fault. In my town the data is publicly free to use for commercial and non commercial purposes. Google does not give a damn about it though (I live in a fairly large town in France)
- jessaustin 11y ago
  There's a difference between serving free data (likely in some idiosyncratic format on some idiosyncratic schedule) and doing the Maps integration oneself. I see many French cities at [0]. I doubt that Google has developers assigned to each one. It seems more likely that each one has its own people using a Maps API to keep Maps transit data current. [0] https://www.google.com/landing/transit/cities/index.html https://www.google.com/landing/transit/cities/index.html

davidbanham 11y ago

I've never had a problem with browser geolocation via navigator.geolocation. What issues are you seeing?

pbreit 11y ago
On iOS it's substantially clunkier for the user. They have to keep agreeing to the coo popup every time they visit the site. And there's not background geo-locating. It's really not even comparable.