urbanMSP

Thought we could use a thread where we could share and inform each other of tablet or smartphone apps that we use that are related to urban living.

Obviously, app-powered services like Uber are good ones. I'd love to see reviews from folks who use it review both the app and the service.

One I discovered recently that I think is iOS/web right now is called Findery. More an amusing app right now, it lets people tag any location with photos and notes for others to discover.

Ooh, a second app I only just came across via a review, Citymapper, (https://medium.com/@zmh/bye-google-maps-ea3ea10f84dc) has been reviewed extremely well compared to Google Maps. If you read that review and want it as bad as I do, go to their website and VOTE to get the Twin Cities added to the covered cities. Oh boy it looks so good.

Well, OMGtransit's mobile website works better than MetroTransit's mobile website unless you have your specific stop bookmarked, and includes information on Car2Go and Niceride as well.

No idea how well their app works, since I'm a filthy WP8 user, but presumably at least as well as the website.

Citymapper looks pretty nice. Transit (iPhone only) is pretty good if you don't have a car, since it has all the public transport plus Nice Ride. Realtime bus locations too, though it doesn't always work.

Last time I used it, OMGTransit's app barely worked. I was really disappointed.

Oh, sad. Their mobile site did work well for me, before I moved and stopped taking the bus daily.

Transitive and pizza pointer are both awesome for windows phone

A few friends if mine have been trying to get me to play an augmented reality game called Ingress. Both iOS and android. Apparently android for a while and iOS more recently.

The gist seems to be you are on one of two teams capturing territory from the other. Real world locations are "portals" in the game which you can claim.

If anything it will get you out and around the city!

That sounds awesome.

I've been wanting to develop an app that would allow you to review or report transit immediately and the information you type in the app would be sent right to Metro Transit. So if you get off the green line and the trip was about 35 minutes when it was supposed to be 28 you can report that and it might urge MT to fix the issues. Or on buses if you have a bus driver that was over aggressive or rude you can report that. Don't know how much usage it would get but I feel like it could really boost the public voice to MT

Last time I used it, OMGTransit's app barely worked. I was really disappointed.

The OMGtransit app works pretty well for me, on Android anyways. I find it is faster and better at determining my location than the web-based app. Using the browser, I frequently had to refresh the list one or more times for it to realize I didn't want departure times for stops near where I was the last time I used it.

The mobile app seems to be pretty much a wrapper of their mobile site. Looking at it again now it isn't terrible, but it lacks a lot of polish that you'd expect; it doesn't support normal iPhone gestures, the map is Google Maps' web-based embedded map instead of a native one, and you can't select a location on the map to get directions to, you have to know the actual address or the name of the location. Transit is better at all of these.

Transitive and pizza pointer are both awesome for windows phone

Are there any Windows Phone apps similar to Transit or OMGTransit, where it just lists the next train/bus arrival time?

Transitive and pizza pointer are both awesome for windows phone

Are there any Windows Phone apps similar to Transit or OMGTransit

Yes, if you convert your phone to Android.

You could just bookmark OMGTransit's mobile site

That's what I did. Works just fine.

Windows phones are smooth to me and have a lot more developers everyday. Also the photo quality is awesome.

Sent from my Windows 8.1 Phone

Also real streets if you look up a route number it will give you the next time a bus or train comes

St. Louis Park released "myStLouisPark" a few days ago, a smartphone app, to report concerns. Available in both Google Play Store and the iPhone App Store.

Eden Prairie uses something similar called "See Click Fix"

Minneapolis uses the same app (SeeClickFix).