As is customary this time of year, we’re all bracing ourselves for the onslaught of Best Lists – that recently minted tradition of distilling the year’s events down to, typically, ten items that impacted life on this planet in some way during the last 12 months.

So we were thrilled today to see that Directions Magazine, the first and largest regularly published online magazine covering geospatial technology, chose our NextBus® real-time passenger information services (RTPIS) mobile app as one of the ten best events, ideas, themes, products, etc. of 2010. They, as well as the many, many thousands of NextBus users across North America, are clearly impressed with the power NextBus has to change the way people interact with transit and go about their daily lives. 

Directions Magazine’s Top Ten isn’t ranked, but we’re very pleased to see NextBus mentioned first. We’ve reproduced that item below, and you can see all ten by going to the story on Directions Magazine.

1. The Geospatial App that Changed My Life
I looked over the New York Times’ “ten must have Android apps list” the other day. I was not impressed. It included things like: Google Shopper, Google Sky Map, Soundhound… toys! Honestly, if the best we can do in the huge world of mobile is offer apps that turn your phone into a wireless trackpad/mouse, mobile hasn’t made it quite yet in my book. The real apps which I believe can be useful for work numbered two: Evernote and QuickOffice.
 
But then there’s NextBus. Not one, but two different people in my life have told me with a totally straight face that this website, about which I had told them, has “changed their lives.” I don’t mean to push NextBus over the other apps that serve up real-time bus info for those of us in the Hub of the Universe, Boston; it’s just the one my friends and I use. I want to identify it as representative of that group of apps. Here in Boston we got most of our buses feeding out real-time data in late summer, and the whole line was covered by September. Then, the bus takers of Boston, the good friends of Charlie (who graces our Charlie Cards), all began to smile as app developers put those data into useable form. Now that it’s 17 degrees outside, we smile more as we walk determinedly from the library or work or the bar just in time to catch the bus. Life is good.