Yesterday I stumbled at STM mobile, a new iPhone OS application that lets you get the Société de Transport de Montréal’s bus passing times, all with detours, and cancelled stops. Also included are the last Métro hours and interval times for each station.

This thing is just brilliant. In less than 24 hours, it became one of my most frequently used apps.  I took 3 buses yesterday, all I had to do is get my iPhone out of my pocket, tap in the bus stop number and select my bus line. Very quick and fast.

And when it’s set to your favorites, it takes 3 seconds (as opposed to the 1 minute it takes to call AUTOBUS, with STM always wanting you to answer their automated survey, before you actually get your bus times)

This little application is pretty great, but I hope to see some new things in possible updates. Here’s my little feature list so far:

• Information caching
  In “Favorite stops” the app should be able to cache the times. When you quit the app and come back, it has to fetch the times again. Instead of displaying the last fetched times if no network connection is present; it displays a [n albeit very elegant] warning that I am not connected to the Internet. This could be easily fixed in a future update. [Update: This was fixed in 1.0.1!]
• Use of localization services
  Use of the localization of the iPhone, somehow. I shown this to a friend and the first thing he said was “And does it find your location automatically and the nearby stops?” All I could say is “uhm.. Oh.. No.. No it doesn’t”.
• Trip planning and more
  Metro map [Update: added in 1.0.1!], “Tous Azimut” trip planning support (if STM would allow such).

This application is a must have for those taking the bus regularity in Montreal. It’s available for $0.99 on the iTunes App Store. As of 3:45 pm on July 31st 2008 it is the 10th most downloaded paid app of the Canadian iTunes Store!

Now the geeky part:

First, let me add that this is the most beautiful application I have seen so far on the iPhone OS beside Apple’s. The developer is a true master of Cocoa Touch, as this uses user interface controls and features I have only seen in Apple’s own apps so far.

Second, I’ve been trying to find out how this application fetches this information. I doubt STM has REST API web services for apps like these to bring back the content.  I just don’t feel like sniffing the traffic between my iPhone and my WiFi access point right now! ;) Anybody know? I’ll email the author of the app and ask him. [Update: It seems the app fetches the info directly from the web pages it parses]

If  STM were to make such info available via web services or the like, perhaps they could also open up access to their trip planning service, which could then be integrated in mobile apps like this.  This would be the most remarkable thing.