F
inding places to take your sprogs during the holidays can be tricky – and getting there even trickier. Tiny Tours, an app developed by Blue Sparrow Apps, aims to change all of this – at least for the lucky residents of Bristol.
Developed as part of an initiative from Bristol Council’s Innovation Team and released just last month, the app uses open data to combine an interactive guide full of ideas for fun activities and days out in Bristol with corresponding live public transport and travel timings.
“For a small start-up like us, it is great to see the council providing opportunities like the Open Data Challenge events to develop new ideas”
Blue Sparrow Apps’ Tiny Tours were the winners of the first Open Data Challenge Event organised by the council in January. At the event the team made use of a new application programming interface (API), created by app-builders UrbanThings, giving participants access to a wealth of transport data such as live bus and train times, stop locations and route maps.
James Harris, Managing Director at Blue Sparrow, says: “We are excited that this app is ready to be launched only six months after we first prototyped it at the workshop. For a small start-up like us, it is great to see the council providing opportunities like the Open Data Challenge events to develop new ideas and push us to work outside of our normal briefs.”
Rainy days
The app has two main filters; ‘Places’ and ‘Tours’ which features ideas for days out based on fun themes such as ‘Culture and Cows’ and ‘Country re-TREATs’.
“Tiny Tours is a great example of how bringing together digital talent in Bristol with open data pioneers can benefits our citizens”
The tours section also displays the amount of time recommended at each attraction and gives a rough idea of costs, as well as showing journey planning information for traveling on foot, by bus, train or car.
Commenting on the success of the challenge and getting this clever new app out into the community, Director of the council’s Bristol Future’s Team Stephen Hilton adds: “It’s fantastic to see an idea become a prototype and then be transformed into a handy tool to help people in Bristol explore the city by public transport or by car.
Tiny Tours is a great example of how bringing together digital talent in Bristol with open data pioneers such as UrbanThings can produce a brilliant resource that benefits our citizens.”
Open Data Challenge
The next opportunity to get involved with this exciting new API and come up with some brand new ideas as part of Bristol Council’s Open Data Challenge will be this October.
Carl Partridge, Director of UrbanThings, shares his excitement: “It’s very rewarding to see this app being brought to fruition and we hope it will encourage other tech types in Bristol to sign up to the next event in the autumn.”
You can download Tiny Tours on iOS and Android for free and follow them on Twitter: @tinytoursapp. It’s also worth stay up-to-date with details of the next Open Data Challenge by following the Bristol Council Innovation team: @connectbristol.
