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This is the part that really ticks me off: >Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina recently said it had experienced three-hour wait times. [

by tacon 10y ago

This is the part that really ticks me off: >Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina recently said it had experienced three-hour wait times. [...] (T.S.A. officials denied that the wait had ever been that long, telling local reporters that it had been 75 minutes for a short time.) Will someone, anyone, please write the simple app that you punch in as you start the line, you punch out as you leave screening, with some simple checks with GPS so we know you are really in one location for that time? Aggregate the data and let people coming to the airport have an idea of how long the wait will be. Use the data as political leverage so the TSA cannot claim "well, the wait wasn't that long". Tell people in line to install the app while they wait, and assure them that their politicians will see the data. Probably not much money in this, but your app will go viral this summer, apparently...

shawkinaw 10y ago
That's pretty much what this app does: http://gomiflight.com http://gomiflight.com
- tacon 10y ago
  Great, thanks! Can they generate press releases and statistics about average and peak wait times per airport? Maybe their penetration isn't hitting a critical mass. I'd love to see a live dashboard that shows "X number of people have been standing in line for Y minutes in city Z", or "the worst lines in the US airport system right now are A, B, and C". Reporters could then just show that display to the TSA press shill and call them out on their bad data in real time.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    There are plenty of great applications of crowdsourced data but the problem with this stuff is always incentivizing people to contribute instead of just consume. It's a non-trivial marketing trick that products like Waze have managed (a big part of why Google didn't fold them into Maps entirely was to maintain the community), but it's certainly not a surefire thing.
- hughes 10y ago
  At the risk of meta-discussion: wow that is the worst scrolling hijack I've ever seen. All the info could easily be in one conventionally-scrolling page, but scrolling is completely disabled, forcing mouse clicks to scroll down, up(!?), and left (!?!?) from the landing page.
franciscop 10y ago
Install an app and everything? Why not just take a picture when you join, then take a picture just before you are there (with the same people before you) and lastly afterwards. Then just upload them to Twitter.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Since when did installing an app become such a big issue? Besides, I don't really see how your solution compares to the one suggested by the parent.
  - franciscop 10y ago
    Since the app-pocalypse :) http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/

by tacon 10y ago

shawkinaw 10y ago

That's pretty much what this app does: http://gomiflight.com http://gomiflight.com

tacon 10y ago
Great, thanks! Can they generate press releases and statistics about average and peak wait times per airport? Maybe their penetration isn't hitting a critical mass. I'd love to see a live dashboard that shows "X number of people have been standing in line for Y minutes in city Z", or "the worst lines in the US airport system right now are A, B, and C". Reporters could then just show that display to the TSA press shill and call them out on their bad data in real time.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  There are plenty of great applications of crowdsourced data but the problem with this stuff is always incentivizing people to contribute instead of just consume. It's a non-trivial marketing trick that products like Waze have managed (a big part of why Google didn't fold them into Maps entirely was to maintain the community), but it's certainly not a surefire thing.
hughes 10y ago
At the risk of meta-discussion: wow that is the worst scrolling hijack I've ever seen. All the info could easily be in one conventionally-scrolling page, but scrolling is completely disabled, forcing mouse clicks to scroll down, up(!?), and left (!?!?) from the landing page.

franciscop 10y ago

Install an app and everything? Why not just take a picture when you join, then take a picture just before you are there (with the same people before you) and lastly afterwards. Then just upload them to Twitter.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Since when did installing an app become such a big issue? Besides, I don't really see how your solution compares to the one suggested by the parent.
- franciscop 10y ago
  Since the app-pocalypse :) http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/app-pocalypse-now/