London Travel Deluxe

London Bus is Crashing! Should I just trash it in a 1 star review?

July 8th, 2010 — 2:25am

Some users are reporting crashing in London Bus 3.01. Unfortunately there is a mistake in London Bus 3.0.1 for the required minimum OS & I apologise for this error. The iTunes stores states a minimum of 3.1.3, this is not correct, the minimum is 4.0 and it is iPhone & iPod Touch compatible only. The current version will not work on an iPad (as this is iOS 3.2), I am working on a separate app for the iPad.

Update: 3.0.2 is now live in the store and now correctly states the minimum version required – iOS4.

If you are experiencing problems…

Ensure you have the latest OS on your device, plug it in into iTunes and select ‘Check for Update’ on the summary screen.
Uninstall the app (hold down the icon until it shakes, hit the ‘x’)
Shut down (COMPLETE POWER OFF OF THE DEVICE, not sleep mode)
Restart
Reinstall the app directly using the ‘App Store’

You will not be charged again as you already own the App. Please note, you will lose any previously saved favourites.

If you have further problems rather than leaving a 1 star review let me know! malcolm@mbarclay.net London Bus should not consistently crash, has been extensively tested & is stable. I can’t respond directly to reviews, but if you email me I can tell you how to fix it or provide a fix if there is something wrong.

What if I don’t want to update to iOS4?
If you accidentally updated the App the only way you can roll back is if you have a prior back up that you can restore to, for example an older sync or perhaps a Time Capsule back up. I can not roll back your version for you.

Why are you moving to iOS4 only? Are you mad?
For a detailed discussion on why I am moving all of my next app releases to iOS4 only, please go here http://mbarclay.net/?p=640

Comment » | General Help

Where is the ‘Home’ Button?

June 28th, 2010 — 12:12am

Take me home has been removed. Some liked it, some didn’t. The feedback I did get in the last version is that people wanted more than just ‘Take Me Home’…they wanted take me to work, gym, pub etc…

This feature is best served by adding, rearranging & using favourites (which has also been simplified). I accept this is disappointing for the users that understood, used & liked the feature. The plan being asked for needed to be clearer & not using take me home correctly could easily result in journey plans the user didn’t want.

That’s not to say I won’t bring it back or add something similar in the future. Will have to see how many users vote for it to come back in some form.

Comment » | General Help

Suggest Correction

December 31st, 2009 — 6:09am

Whilst I have endeavoured to have location for every bus stop in the application there are a small number that I don’t have the details for (about 5.6%). You will notice a “[ Location Unknown ]” label for the stops I do not have the exact address of. Continue reading »

Comment » | Routes

Using Journey Plans

December 31st, 2009 — 5:56am

Once you have a set of journey plans, you can review its details. There are many layers of detail that make up a journey plan. It’s up to you to choose the plan that suits you best & progressively tap to reveal more details. Continue reading »

Comment » | Journey Plan

Plan (Journey Planning)

August 22nd, 2009 — 10:30am

Plan (Journey Planning)

Journey Plan User Guide

Use the plan section to obtain realtime journey plans directly from Transport for London (TfL). An internet connection is required to use journey planning.

How To Get A Journey Plan

To plan a journey, you must enter a from & to location, departure (or desired arrival) date & time and select at least one mode of transport.

Tapping on the From or To Location field will take you to an address details screen. There are a number of ways you can enter an address.

Manual Address Entry

You can enter the partial or full address details in the three line address table at the top of the screen. For example, in the city field you can enter ‘Farringdon’ and hit search, this will find the best match for a central address in Farringdon. Or you could just enter a postcode if you know that. Or just the street number & name, most times the address entry system will obtain the correct full address for you first time. If not, you will need to provide more details, perhaps the city e.g Westminster.

A postcode will always be looked up (verified) for any address you enter. This makes obtaining a journey plan easy & far less error prone than searching by address details alone. If you do not know or are unsure of the postcode, then do not enter anything in the postcode field. Partial postcodes like ‘SE1′ are not allowed. You do not have to enter the space when entering postcodes.

Locate Me

Tap ‘Locate Me’ and London Bus will find the full address details for your current location, including the postcode. The address found may not always be 100% accurate, but for the purposes of journey planning it will be close enough. Due to the way location services work you may need to wait for several updates to obtain your address.

TIP: If you move whilst the application is searching for your current address, it will keep finding addresses for each new location.

Find Station

The location details for over 500 stations including the Tube, DLR, Overground & Rail are included in London Bus. Tap find station and a search box with the keyboard already opened will be presented, enter the first few letters of the station name and hit search or select the found station in the list. The station finder will close and take you directly back to the main plan screen so you can complete any other journey plan details. If you do not see your station in the list, it is likely that it is a station not covered by TfL journey planning.

Once you have located or entered your address details, you can use that address by tapping the ‘Plan’ back button. You can clear all address details by tapping the ‘Clear Address’ button.

Departure or Arrival Date & Time

By default the plan section will alway start with the current date & time and assume you are planning to ‘depart’ at this time. To change this, tap the date & time and select a new date & time using the scroll wheels. You can also indicate that you wish to ‘arrive’ at the date & time entered. The journey planner will then work back in time when suggestion departure times and services used.

Travel By

If you wish to exclude particular transport services from being used in journey plans tap the name of the service. A tick mark will toggle on or off to indicate if it will be used when journey planning.

Journey Plans

Once you have completed all of your journey details, tap ‘Get Journey Plans’. Another screen will be displayed offering several possible itineraries from the TfL journey planner. Please note that journey plans can take up to a minute to retrieve this is not a fault of London Bus as it is awaiting response from TfL. The best performance is experienced on WiFi connections, but it will work over Edge & 3G.

Journey Plan Itinerary

Once you have received a number of journey plan results, tapping on an item in the list will display an itinerary for the journey. Depending on the mode of transport for each leg, varying information will be displayed, for example a bus route will display the stop name, code and direction. Only the top level details for each leg are displayed, this provides a quick glance usability; tap the leg and you can either view further details or have the the position pinned for you on Google Maps.

Use the plan section to obtain real time journey plans. An Internet connection is required to use journey planning. There are a number of ways you can select your from & to locations when journey planning, you can plan by…

Postcode
Address (partial or full details)
General locality
Point of Interest (POI)
Favourite
Station (Underground or Rail)
Bus Stop
Your current location (Locate Me)

4 comments » | Journey Plan

Answers to common questions (FAQ’s)

August 22nd, 2009 — 10:29am

• Read Me

Answers to common questions

Thanks for taking the time to read the online help. There is a lot in London Bus and a few minutes spent here will help you get the most out of the application.

Why is journey planning so slow!

This is down to the response time at the Transport for London journey planning server. London Bus retrieves all plans in one hit, this way once you have a set of journey plans as you select & view each one the application does not need to go back to the server again. This makes navigating & deciding on the best plan for you much faster. It can take upto 2 minutes to receive some plans; journey planning is generally faster over a WiFi connection but it does work over Edge & 3G. The TfL server will sometimes slow up at the beginning and end of each work day.

Why is there a splash (start-up) screen?

The application will display a screen at start-up while it is loading, the screen is displayed for the duration of the load only and is not an ad. Behind the scenes a lot happens at startup time, what you are seeing here is the trade off between taking an extra second or two to load essential data upfront versus making the user wait as various sections are navigated. For London Bus, taking the hit upfront is far better, once its loaded the experience is smooth and seamless.

I am open to other suggestions for screens, however if I were to take the screen away it would display a black screen for exactly the same amount of time. The splash screen does not slow the loading of the application.

Why isn’t anything updating?

By default your device will join any Wi-Fi service it can, sometimes these services have no initial password to join but do have a secondary login (for example many Airport lounges) in which you pay for wireless access. You can confirm this is the case by loading Safari; it will usually take you to a site to join as a member. Your device will favour using a wireless connection. This means you can end up the situation where you can see that you have a network connection, but can not receive any status updates, departure information or even correctly locate.

To work around this, enter the device’s ‘Settings’ select the network under ‘Wi-Fi’ and ‘Forget this Network’. Or simply turn off Wi-Fi to use the 3G/Edge network. Don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re at familiar wireless spots.

I have a bug & the app crashes, should I just trash it in a review?

Please let me know if you have any problems using the application, I fully support London Bus, and it has very active development. I want to know about the good and the bad.

Most bugs are identified quickly, and solutions are either underway or awaiting release. If you find a bug, please contact me with the details of the issue, I can then recreate the problem & fix it. The application should not consistently crash.

What other features are planed?

Whatever is suggested by you, the end user. I receive a lot of good suggestions, I can’t say they will all get done, but I do try and respond to all emails. Features that are requested the most and I can see merit in (i.e most useful) help set the development road map. So please, email me! malcolm@mbarclay.net

About Me

I spend most of my time in lead or senior contracting roles building all sorts of systems and applications on a number of technologies (Flex, Java, Objective-C, Web Scripting Languages and about 5 different database flavours). Feel free to email or give me a call. Mb. +44 (0)7515 357 232

Why is journey planning so slow!
This is down to the response time at the Transport for London journey planning server. On average it takes about 15 seconds to retrieve a set of journey plans.

London Bus retrieves all plans in one hit, this way once you have a set of journey plans as you select & view each one the application does not need to go back to the server again. This makes navigating & deciding on the best plan for you much faster.

The planing system will wait up to 2 minutes to get a journey plan; after that it will time out and you will need to try again. Journey planning is generally faster over a WiFi connection but it does work and has been throughly tested over Edge & 3G.

The TfL server will sometimes slow up at the beginning and end of each work day. Continue reading »

Comment » | General Help