[dorkbotdc-blabber] TSA Crowdsourcing Experiment + Changes to FlyOnTime.us

[Alberto Gaitán]

Apologies for cross posting. Thought this might be of interest, 
especially if you're traveling this Summer.

 From Josh Sulkin of the little bit awesome http://www.flyontime.us


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I'd like to announce some major changes to the Apps For America 2
entry FlyOnTime.us, as well as ask for your help in a "crowdsourcing"
experiment I'm conducting.

First the experiment…I originally wanted to incorporate the data from
the TSA's airport security line wait time calculator into my website,
but unfortunately they discontinued it for some reason:

http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/waittime.shtm

It seems they are revamping it, but regardless it didn't provide the
information I really want which is real-time data on the wait time at
the airport security lines.

My proposal is for you to go to flyontime.us from your iPhone,
Blackberry, or other smart phone when you enter a security line and
tell me what airport you're at (a form for this will automatically
come up if you're viewing the website on a mobile phone).  Likewise,
when you exit the security line, just click a button on the site to
tell me so, and this way I'll know how long you were in line.  If
enough people do this, I can get real time statistics on airport
security wait times.

I also wrote some code to monitor Twitter, so if you want you can just
tweet this message when you enter airport security:

#airportsecurity xxx in

and tweet this message when you leave the line:

#airportsecurity xxx out

where xxx is an airport code like "ord" or "lax".  This way you don't
have to go to my website but I can still monitor the real-time wait
times.  More information on this is available at:

http://www.flyontime.us/lines/security

I have no idea if this idea will work or be a total flop, but this is
Sunlight LABS after all, so it seems like a good place to try this
kind of experiment.  So, if you're traveling some time soon, consider
contributing your wait time.  Also, if you like this idea, please
spread the word (one way is to mention @flyontime and "TSA
crowdsourcing" on twitter).

There have also been some other changes to the website, mostly due to
the great work of my new collaborator on this project, Josh Tauberer.
In addition to the original Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)
data, Josh added three new government data sources: real-time airport
status from the FAA, historical weather data from NOAA, and real-time
weather from the National Weather Service.  Using this data, you can
now see what arrival delays typically are in different weather
conditions such as fog, rain, snow, etc.  For example, look at this:

http://www.flyontime.us/flights/MQ/4806/BOS/LGA

Also, Josh added holiday delay information for each airport, so you
can see how much extra delay there will be around Christmas, Memorial
Day, etc.:

http://www.flyontime.us/airports/ORD

Finally, Josh greatly improved the overall look of the site.

Sorry for the long post.  I hope you enjoy using the site.  Please
tell me if you have any questions or comments.

Josh