Travic Offers a Glimpse into our Real-Time Future

The last several years have seen a shift from batch updates to real-time information flow, with continuous streams of small messages being sent to any number of applications and users. At the same time advances in mobile apps and web visualization technologies are enabling the presentation of real-time information in increasingly dynamic, intuitive and interactive ways. There have been few examples of the pieces coming together as well as Travic, an app that displays the current location of every train or bus in metropolitan areas around the world.

As I’ve written about previously, making real-time transit system data available is the low hanging fruit of the Internet of Things. It’s cheap and easy to put a GPS device on a bus or train, and many of our customers already use Solace to publish streaming transit or logistics data to the Internet, live apps and downstream systems that need to use, analyze or archive it.

Travic took a unique approach by designing their app for the ideal end state when they’ll have access to “all real-time everything”, and using the best currently available information for now. That means real-time feeds with accurate up to the minute GPS data when it exists, and predictive calculations based on static transit schedules where it doesn’t. As more and more global transit systems make real-time feeds available, Travic is ready to flip the switch and evolve into an increasingly more accurate and useful tool.

Take a good look at Travic. It’s a great example of the end-game for the Internet of Things, at least as far as real-time display goes.