Posts Tagged ‘cars’

Version 1.0.5 Released

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

We recently released version 1.0.5 of the Avego Shared Transport iPhone app.

Version 1.0.5 provides a number of improvements to the user interface. For example, both the “Map” and “Info” screens have been updated to make them more user-friendly.

Each stop along your route is now highlighted on the map view as you travel. You can zoom in and pan across the map quickly and easily. The “Info” screen also presents information more clearly about upcoming stops along your route.

The map view in version 1.0.5

The map view in version 1.0.5

Drivers can now start a journey from anywhere along their route and end a journey (dropping off all passengers) at any point by pressing the “End” button.

This latest update also ensures that the iPhone app runs smoothly with the new iPhone 3.0 OS software and provides a number of bug fixes and optimizations.

We are always working hard to improve our software based on the feedback we receive from users. We will be releasing a major update of the iPhone app in the next few months, so this is the last opportunity for users to provide feedback and suggestions for how we can improve the iPhone app before the release of version 2.0.

You can send us feedback directly via a new “Send Feedback” button in version 1.0.5, or just leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Avego Shared Transport is now an entry in the ITS Congestion Challenge, which aims to identify the best and most creative ideas for tackling traffic congestion. You can learn more about the competition and support Avego’s entry here.


Mapflow Avego wins role to provide pioneering mobile traveler information and guiding system to Madrid

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Mapflow Avego wins role to provide pioneering mobile traveler information and guiding system to Madrid

The OPTI-TRANS project will enable the first system to optimize real-time passenger information for buses,
metro trains and shared transport.

DUBLIN, Ireland (12 March 2009, Dublin) – Mapflow Avego has been selected to work with a consortium of
leading European R&D organizations to develop an innovative location-based mobile traveler information
and guiding system in Madrid, Spain. The OPTI-TRANS (Optimized Transport System for Mobile Location
Based Services) project, funded by the European Commission, will introduce for the first time a system that
enables commuters to plan a trip based on combining real-time passenger information for public transport
services with private carpools (“shared transport”).

“Madrid has one of the busiest public transport systems in the world, and now includes one of the largest bus
networks in Europe. Even so, we want to expand public transport even further, and this ʻshared transportʼ
concept could help by expanding the reach of our public transport system to places the buses don’t run,”
said Enrique Diego Bernardo, Head of Technology Projects for EMT, the transport operator for Madridʼs bus
service.

The system, which will be available via mobile phones, will serve as a personal transportation navigation tool
for Madridʼs commuters. Users will be presented with the optimum route for their trip, based on their current
location and the real-time availability of seats on buses, metro trains, and on the shared transport network of
private vehicles carrying GPS-enabled mobile phones.

“With global warming, geopolitical uncertainty of oil supplies, and ever-worsening congestion problems, we
are looking to provide ways to encourage people to get out of their single occupancy vehicles and extend the
public transport network to reach every street in every city,” said Mapflow Avego Managing Director Sean
O’Sullivan. “Madrid shares this vision of a society which is less enslaved by dependence on cars for all
personal travel, and we hope to help Madrid enable more efficient transport through better information
availability.”

Mapflow Avegoʼs contribution to the OPTI-TRANS project highlights the potential for the Shared Transport
concept, a version of which was released earlier this year as a free iPhone application. Avego Shared
Transport uses iPhone GPS technology and web services to dynamically match spare transport capacity in
private vehicles with transport demand from commuters. The integration of real-time passenger information
for shared transport with public transport will dramatically expand commuting options in Madrid by enabling
private cars to become part of the public transport network.

“The EU is looking to promote a sustainable transport environment through the use of innovative location
based applications”, said Boris Kennes, Galileo Applications Officer at the European GNSS Supervisory
Authority. “Everybody can benefit from advances in satellite technologies. The introduction of location-based
information and guiding services in Madrid will help commuters to plan their journeys in an efficient manner,
but it will also reduce traffic congestion and urban air pollution.”

Mapflow Avegoʼs shared transport expertise and capabilities will be strengthened through its collaboration on
this project with some of Europeʼs leading R&D organizations.

“The OPTI-TRANS project provides us with a unique opportunity to demonstrate the potential for a mobile
route navigation application in a truly multimodal urban environment. Madridʼs commuters will be able to
conveniently access real-time passenger information from public transportation services and private ʻshared
transportʼ services, at any time and from any location”, said Mr José Antonio Jimenez of Telefonica I&D.
The OPTI-TRANS project, which kicked off in January 2009, is hosted by EMT and Telefonica I&D, one of
the worldʼs leading telecommunications companies.

ABOUT MAPFLOW AVEGO

Mapflow Avego introduces efficient methods for dynamically matching available transport capacity with
transport demand and communicating real-time passenger information (RTPI) to passengers. Mapflow
Avego combines GPS devices, mobile phones and Internet technologies to provide drivers and transport
operators with reduced costs and higher efficiencies, while expanding transport options for passengers.
Mapflow Avego’s transportation expertise spans customers as diverse as Transport for London, the
Ministries of Transport for the UK and the Netherlands, the European Space Agency, cities and public
transport operators from Dublin to Madrid, and thousands of individual consumers and private transport
operators. Led by a multinational team of transportation experts in the US and Europe, the company is
headquartered in Ireland. To learn more, visit www.avego.com or contact info@avego.com.

ABOUT OPTI-TRANS

OPTI-TRANS is a collaborative project partially funded under the European Commission’s 7th Framework
research program. Led by Denarius Professional, the OPTI-TRANS consortium brings together the
capabilities of companies and public transport agencies across Europe. The project aims to demonstrate the
potential for Location Based Services (LBS) and GSS technology, particularly through the development of a
dynamically updated and location aware pedestrian and public transport navigation tool.


Launching at DEMO

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

DEMO is a really awesome show, run twice a year, with the goal of introducing cutting edge technology companies to the press, venture capitalists, corporate execs and others who attend the show.

Evidently it’s fairly selective, like 1-out-of-10-that-apply kind of selective (I don’t know for sure, cause we got invited to attend, so how selective could they really be? :-)

It’s a great show.  Unlike a lot of the typical kind of bogus slide-ware kind of companies, the companies that present at DEMO must be able to demonstrate their cutting edge technology in 6 minutes or less to an impatient crowd of 800 twitchy fingered web-blogging, web-surfing technogeeks.

Our DEMO was just barely working on the iPhone when we got to the show.  Despite the fact we’d been working on our technology nearly 2 years before the DEMOfall ’08 show, the GPS iPhone had only come out in mid-July and we hadn’t been able to get our hands on the developer iPhone until then.

So we had about 6 weeks to port our application from the other platforms we’d been developing for to the iPhone… and it was kind of hit-or-miss.

On Wednesday late afternoon, we shot a video (Tanya Reihill, a Dublin filmmaker friend of mine who I’d gone to film school with at USC (Los Angeles), was DP for most of it… and she let us use her car for a prop! Thanks TR! I uploaded the footage from the airport on Thursday morning to an editor friend (Norm Anderson) in Los Angeles while Harvey & I waited to board the plane… even though Norm was working on a reality show and wouldn’t be able to edit it until Friday, I hoped he could at least have a look at the footage to figure out how it would go together.

We then flew out from Dublin to San Francisco to meet with our PR company, Schwartz Communications, on Thursday afternoon so we could give them a demo of our 6 minute demo and get their feedback.  While we had a script, we didn’t have it sync’ed to the demo, and so they really couldn’t give us that much feedback! At least we finished the press release. And needless to say, the script needed fine-tuning.  We flew down Thursday night to San Diego, where the DEMO show was to be held.

On Friday, while Harvey recorded routes and set-up stops in San Diego (so we could give live, in-vehicle demos to the press later), I put together a rough edit of the video and tried to sync it to the script. Saturday we had to present the locked script to the DEMO people for our run-through.  When we ran it through, we realized that there was a massive sync problem (the video was like 40 seconds different than the text). Not to mention the script was about 1 minute too long.

Argh.

Well, anyway, we finished the two videos we needed to create (one of the videos was for our website, www.avego.com; the other for the live presentation).  On Monday, we put the website up, and on Tuesday gave a bleary-eyed presentation that just managed to go under the six minute limit.  Whew.

The good news?  We seemed to be one of the “hits” of the show.  We made quite a few “top 10″ lists and even got to meet some heros (like Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal).

The product is still not-quite-ready for primetime.  We hope to release it in several more weeks, but as long as we get it out by the end of the year, I think we’re doing fine.

Woo hoo!

– sean