Watch Ferries Bounce Across Screen in Real Time
February 25th, 2010 by ed friedrichWashington State Ferries has launched a new and improved Vessel
Watch tool on its Web page. A Beta version, it’s a work in
progress, but already cooler than its primitive but useful
predecessor.
The new Vessel Watch pretty much does the same thing as the old,
but better. They’re both basically maps with little icons
representing the boats so you can see which ones are on a route and
where they are at the moment.
The new map is more detailed and looks a lot nicer, which doesn’t
really add to its functionality, but you can zoom in and out, which
you can’t on the old one. Every few seconds you can see the new
boat icons move across the water, like green jumping beans. It uses
GPS coordinates from the boats’ transponders. On the old map, you
had to hit the refresh button for the little blue arrows to move to
their approximate locations.
They’re still working on some advanced features. If you click on a
boat, a screen pops up with slots for next departure, estimated
arrival time, heading, speed, longitude and latitude. Today, only
the heading is working. I’m pretty sure the latitude and longitude
were there when I looked a few days ago. The next departure time is
supposed to be available by the end of the month.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
February 25th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
yes, it looks like WSF is about to provide something useful. Next it needs to be a IPhone app and we will be liberated from sitting in the ferry terminal!