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@Velocio
On a very serious request... a really good bike app for the Bicycle Hire thing would be lovely.
I have a dataset that you can use (which I will get working again, but you can start using now):
http://www.lfgss.com/api/tfl.php
The app should clearly cope with the following use cases:
1) I'm heading North... where are the nearest free bikes along that route? (Note: You don't want to walk South 300m if there are free bikes North 350m).
2) Following on from #1, if I arrive and there are now no bikes free, where are the next nearest free bikes (this could be #1 again, or you could adapt #1 to show the nearest 2 places along the direction of travel).
3) I know where to pick up a bike, but I don't know where to drop a bike off... show me a map so that I can locate my destination and see where the drop-off points are and how many spaces there are.
4) I want to be able to favourite some locations so that when I fire up the app I can check bike availability at those points (i.e. the 4 points closest to Waterloo if I get the train in the morning, I could check them from the train so I know which way to go from the station).
I imagine that this would be laid out as three tabs at the top: Nearest, Map, Favourites.
I imagine that Nearest would show a slim compass line below the tab and then a grid displaying rows of nearest bikes in that direction. Turn South and it would hide some rows and show some others. The logic for this is: List all stops within 150m regardless of direction, List only direction of travel +- 45' over 150m.
I imagine that Map would simply be the Google map with the location markers on them... clicking on a location marker should bring up a bubble allowing you to favourite the place and to also show you bikes free and bikes available.
I imagine that Favourites would show a list of the favourites places sorted by distance from you (but allowing alphabetic sort) and that clicking on a place would show that place centred on a map with any other favourited places nearby.
For this, I will offer a guarantee of availability of the API, and give you promotional prominence on the Cycle Show stand.