The 90s were quiet on public transport compared to the 80s, and I feel that this decade is another loud one.

MP3 phones were seen as a fantastic invention, but doesn’t it annoy you when someone has the audacity to play their MP3 phone at high volumes, forcing you to listen to low quality music of poor taste which has obviously just been downloaded off LimeWire? It annoys me.

This is a brief post, but I suspect you’ll agree with me.

Update: My friend tells me this is a grumpy old man post; but I’d argue it’s the social implications of tech!

When showing Google Maps to an elderly relative, I was amazed to see that all the bus stops in my village were on it. It got me thinking; how well do public transport companies/organisations utilise technology?

Railways

On my local rail line, everything’s quite old-fashioned. My local station is unmanned and there isn’t as much as a ticket machine, so I have to buy a ticket when I board the train. My nearest major station is a little more high tech, with a few CRT televisions with times on and an automated ticket machine.

In all fairness to the railways, The Trainline is a darn good service which gives train times in addition to selling tickets, although it would be nice if you could print tickets from it on the day, instead of having to collect them from a station or getting them through the post.

Some operators are slightly more innovative, like Chiltern Railways, who allow users to print their own tickets or have them sent as a barcode to their mobile phone. However, this still has to be done the day before and sadly their remit is at the other end of England! Germans are lucky, because apparently Deutsche Bahn seem to have a much nicer version of this service!

Google Maps and Google Earth seem to have all British passenger railways and rail stations too, which is nice.

Buses

As mentioned above, Google Maps now seems to have all bus stops but is unable to provide times and directions via. public transport for anything besides buses monitered by Traveline South East.

Traveline, which is used to plan journeys by public transport (air, buses, rail, sea), is not as well-known as the rail-specific Trainline.

Some bus companies also offer innovative payment methods, such as via mobile phone, but these vary from operator to operator. My local bus operator is trialling payment by mobile phone barcodes in other parts of the country, and hopefully we’ll get it soon, and you can also pay for a weekly or monthly ticket by PayPoint.

There is a long way to go and I would love it if they would kindly open up their databases, so their data could be used by third-parties like Google.

Overall points

Payment by mobile phone, and online, should be increased. This would surely cut costs (less tickets to print?) and would speed everything up. Also, databases should be opened up so sites like Google can use them to provide directions.

What’s the use of technology in public transport like where you are?

The Apple iPhone was released today in the UK. I hadn’t got any hopes up as I knew how expensive the contract would be and I realised that the chances of unlocking an iPhone permanently are near zero due to the fact Apple fixes unlocks via. updates.

A good friend of mine was anticipating the iPhone launch but hadn’t been following developments of its release in the UK as much as myself. She didn’t know that including the contract, an iPhone would start at £900 (about US$1,900 or €1300) and whilst this does include 200 mins and 200 texts monthly for 18 months she thought it was still pretty costly.

It’s interesting how Apple Store UK fails to mention the contract on their homepage yet mentions a fairly generous pricetag of £269 and the phone’s 8GB of memory.

One of Apple’s key markets are students and teenagers who are surely unlikely to be able to afford to splash out a minimum of £35/month for a minimum of 18 months. I wonder what Apple’s motivations behind contracting their phones are… the consumer would no doubt be much happier if they were unlocked!

My friend realises that a price nearing £1000 isn’t worth it for any phone, regardless of how cool it is. When you add into this the fact that the iPhone lacks 3G it seems even more of a rip off…

I think it’s also worth noting how the British consumer is being charged more than Americans. The total cost for an American iPhone with a 2 year contract (entitling 450 mins and 200 texts) costs US$1900… a British contract for 18 months and less than half of that amount of minutes costs the same amount!

Apple need to remember who their market is, especially outside the land of freedom fries and other Americanisms, and not lose touch with the consumer by solely pursuing profits as they blatantly have done with the contracting of the iPhone. I won’t be getting an iPhone due to its hefty price tag in addition to its lack of 3G (whilst 3G isn’t widespread in the UK, it certainly can come in useful!).

Tags: apple, iphone, o2

Since 2003, my mobile phone operator has been T-Mobile and throughout this period my needs have changed. Over the past 2 years, I’ve needed a data connection much more and until yesterday I continued to use GPRS but today I set my first 3G phone. Whilst at my house I’m lucky to get a UMTS signal, I enjoyed listening to last.fm in the car to a nearby small city.

I thought accessing fairly high quality streaming audio would cost me a small fortune but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that 3G data, like GPRS, is capped at £1 a day (and that’s on PAYG!). I downloaded an amount well in excess of 5MB and whilst this doesn’t sound much it was really convenient.

The beauty of it is that I can use my phone as a modem so I can get speeds between dial-up and broadband in some places and speeds roughly equal to dial-up (GPRS) pretty much anywhere for £1 a day which in my opinion is much better than paying whatever extortionate amount commercial WiFi networks demand!

On my current price plan I pay only 3p per text (this weekend I receive free texts as if you to your phone up on a Friday for an amount over £10, T-Mobile give you free weekend texts) and no more than £1 daily for data. Considering I’m not a big fan of traditional telephony I don’t object to being charged 40p/min for the occasional time where I might use the ‘phone’ aspect.

What’s your favourite phone network and why?

Tags: t-mobile, t mobile

Today is Blog Action Day

Tired of charging your phone through mains? Why not splash out on various gadgets which could provide a renewable charge to your gadgets?

There are several ways you could charge your phone whilst not using mains’ energy.

1. You could use a clockwork charger!
2. Or perhaps a £30 solar panel?
3. Make your bike charge your phone? (and reduce car use too!)
4. Or a wind turbine? (not commercially available… yet!)
5. May be you could use a wee-powered battery?

Whilst this is obviously a joke post… I doubt any of the above produce significant amounts of energy,,, the message is valid.

Tags: blog action day, gadgets