Awesome!<p>Now, nitpicking: When the badges move, the speed is not realistic. Of course, that's only natural, because it's just an update to its new position, it's not actual motion. But it's still jarring to see buses zooming across 3 blocks in 5 seconds. :)<p>Would it be possible to visualize the position update in a different way, to better suggest it's just a position update, not actual motion? I'm thinking, leave the badge in its old place temporarily, make a new badge that moves quickly to the new place, and leave a faint low-contrast or transparent "trail" connecting the two. Once the new badge is in the updated position, remove the old badge and the trail.<p>Basically, the whole transition should be much quicker, and clearly indicate it's an update, not actual motion.
This map would be more useful if instead of each bus being represented by a nondescript MUNI logo, that it was an icon that contained the route number. As it stands it appears the only way to get useful information is to hover over each logo to work out what it represents.
I guess this gives nice visualization to the deplorable state of Muni. Right now I see nine L trains clustered basically on top of each other in the Sunset.<p>Maybe one between market and West Portal and one on market near Embarcadero. I take the J and as usual I see independent cars running outbound right next to each other with unusually large and sporadic gaps between them.<p>Hard to believe $820 million for such a shitty service.
This is possible because of the NextBus API, where apparently NextBus is a private contractor used by many cities solely to provide this info.<p>If you click on "Select your transit system" on the NextBus website and scroll down for NYC, you'll see that the MTA's Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Brox services are covered (as well as the private "Downtown Connection" bus service in lower Manhattn) but that the normal MTA Manhattan service isn't covered. Does anyone know why? Maybe it's just in the process of being rolled out?<p><a href="http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/agencySelector.jsp" rel="nofollow">http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/agencySelector.jsp</a>
Love this, to chime in with suggestions, something with color indicating inbound/outbound would be awesome for seeing through some of the noise. Love the line selection idea as well.
When I traveled in Oslo, the excellent bus system had stops with realtime arrival information. Wonder if this can't be bootstrap into a similar system. (And an aside: Why oh why can't we have the same thing in SF?) Some examples below:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/54493673@N00/388240155/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/54493673@N00/388240155/</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21779731@N07/4876550088/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/21779731@N07/4876550088/</a>
Also great is QuickMuni, an open source Android app with a really nice UI (including live maps) -- <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worldofbilly.quickmuni&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worldofbil...</a><p>(No connection to the developer, though he spoke at Noisebridge's Five Minutes of Fame recently)