Where is my bus?I am sure you are wondering what I have been doing with all my spare time when I’m not blogging. Well, believe it or not, I actually work for a living! And what I do is software development for a company that makes really cool products for mass transit systems. And here is the result of my work: The BusTime Bus Location Map. This cool product uses our GPS-based system to track the locations of city buses, create predictions of their arrival times at their stops, and display that information on an easy-to-use map. If you live in Chicago this will probably be very useful. If you don’t live in Chicago, it is still cool.

Try it… go to the link above and then click on the routes button on the right-hand side of the map. Select “20 – Madison” and “9 – Ashland” then click “Done”. You will see pink and orange buses moving on the screen. Yes, those represent real city buses on the streets of Chicago. You can zoom in or out. Move your mouse over a bus or stop and you will get arrival predictions for that bus or stop. If you click on a bus or stop, it will open a box on the screen and you can sit back and watch the predictions automatically update! What could be cooler than that?

OK, I admit I’m a bit of a geek but this is probably the coolest software I have ever written. There are tens of thousands of lines of code performing this magic. Enjoy!