Metro-North officials will conduct a live demonstration of their “Train Time” smartphone app at Hastings station from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9. The next two Tuesdays will see similar app demonstrations at Brewster and Portchester stations.

Metro-North says the app covers 67 stations so far, and there have been 71,000 “hits” on the website. Riders with an enabled smartphone–Blackberry, iPhone, etc.–can get real-time train info.

“This new service allows customers to check the status of train service in real time at their home stations or wherever they are traveling,” said Metro-North President Howard Permut.  “It gives people the freedom to plan a trip and get up-to-the-minute information to make necessary adjustments while they are out and about.  We think it’s a technology whose time has come.” 

Says the press release:

Smart phones and computers will show whether a train is On Time, Late, Canceled or Delayed, including the number of minutes it is late, also what track it will arrive on and what stops it makes. 

The guy holding up the line on the stairs at Hawthorne station because he was playing Connect Four on his smartphone.

Sir.

It was the end of the long workday, and we all just wanted to get down the stairs at Hawthorne station, climb into our cars (or, in the case of three people in the whole of Hawthorne, climb onto our bikes), and head home for dinner and a Don Draper digestif.

You, Sir, were in no such rush. No, you took your own sweet time heading down the stairs. You were, in fact, engrossed in a game of Connect Four on your Blackberry.

Yes, when I finally had the slim opening to pass you, I saw the bright glow of your PDA screen, with the Connect Four board shining in the dark mid-Westchester November night.

Connect Four! That mid-’70s Milton Bradley creation, a barely entertaining mash-up of checkers and tic tac toe (frankly, neither of its forefathers was all that entertaining either, so it’s no surprise the offspring ended up dull).

In fact, the most lasting legacy of Connect Four would have to be the commercial: a bowl-cutted lad outfoxed by his sister, if memory serves, offering up a defeated “Pretty sneaky, Sis!” with equal parts dejection and respect.

That’s what occupied your mind, fellow traveler, and that’s what held up the masses behind you.

What’s next for you, Sir, a Hungry Hippos app?

Frustratedly,

Trainjotting

Tired of the fake word “app” yet? Me too, and I wish William Safire was around to make fun of it.

Speaking of apps, the app-spat between commuter advocacy site StationStops.com and the MTA over StationStops’ iPhone app has reached detente, says StationStops auteur/app-master Chris Schoenfeld.

Reads a StationStops press release:

Apple reinstated the app this week in response to a priority request from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) which retracted its previous intellectual property claims against the application.

The MTA had claimed that outside parties making money off its schedule information was an infringement of its copyright, and ordered the removal of the app from the iTunes store in August. StationStops saw it differently. The case was being followed carefully by the media, including the blogosphere, and the legal community.

Schoenfeld suggests the railroad work with him, not against him:

“MTA has publicly stated that it wishes to reconsider its approach to mobile application development and I applaud them for this turnaround. This has been accompanied by additional gestures of meaningful action, but there is still much more to be done. The MTA is a massive transit service with serious budgetary concerns and, as incoming CEO Jay Walder has identified, is sorely lacking in real-time information delivery to its customers. By simply publishing their existing schedule database and other information online, as other major transit agencies have done, outside developers have the ability to fill massive gaps in real-time customer information for MTA at little or no cost - in a timeframe MTA could never realize internally.”

Our Metro-North blogging brethren StationStops, who’s gotten considerable ink/face time for his spat with the MTA over his iPhone app offering real-time schedule information, says the row continues. At the heart of the issue is whether or not the MTA owns its schedule information, and whether an independent blogger/app creator can make money by formatting and selling such information.

StationStops mastermind Chris Schoenfeld says the MTA is holding out for a 10% cut of his royalties garnered between the app’s launch date and the time Schoenfeld and the MTA commenced a licensing discussion with the railroad–about $170.

Chris writes:

StationStops for iPhone is in compliance with a newly-released MTA licensing policy document. In the document, developers who collect the schedule data themselves and put an MTA-approved disclaimer on their app do not need to have a license with MTA or pay royalties. StationStops has identified this to MTA and requested that the MTA retract the cease and desist to Apple in writing so Apple will return StationStops to the iTunes store. MTA has told StationStops that they will only retract the cease and desist when StationStops agrees to pay 10% of StationStops sales between the time it launched (Oct. 21, 2008), and the time MTA first entered into licensing discussions with StationStops (Dec. 18, 2008).  Their argument is that, during that sales period, the existing disclaimer language for the application: ‘Not affiliated with MTA’ Was insufficient, and StationStops needs to pay royalties during that sales period. Although StationStops has always expressed willingness to change disclaimer language in good faith with MTA – and has done so – it rejects the claim that our original disclaimer was insufficient, and has not to date paid the royalty amount in question, which is approximately $170. 

In addition, that claim by MTA is not what is asserted in MTA’s cease and desist to Apple, which is now invalid, and StationStops has requested that the cease and desist be retracted in writing, with the $170 being a completely unrelated discussion.

Some enterprising fellows have developed a new Blackberry app offering train, bus and ferry times for the New York City area.  

Writes developer Alex:

I got so frustrated having to look up my train schedules on my Blackberry’s mobile browser that I decided to make my own application to solve this problem. NYC Transit gives people their train, bus, and ferry schedules to get in and out of NYC (Metro North, NJ Transit train and bus, and NY Waterway ferry).

The app costs $4.95, can be deployed on any Blackberry with an OS 4.2 or higher, and can be found on Blackberry’s App World under the travel category, or at www.getnyctransit.com.

NJ Transit riders such as JerseyJim are encouraged to tack on an hour and 40 minutes to any Jersey-bound evening train.

In terms of the iPhone, our blogging brethren StationStops has done a brisk business with his Metro-North app. It sells for $5.99 and is described thusly:

StationStops is an iPhone Application which allows to riders check the regular schedule for trains coming into and out of Grand Central, *with or without an internet connection.*