If He'd Had a Web-Enabled Celly, the Rabbit Would've Won
Those beknighted souls with web-enabled cell phones will now get places faster than everyone else, because the Washington State DOT has created small screen versions of their wildly popular real-time traffic maps.
The larger real-time maps, launched in 1994, receive 400,000 daily page views. (Though state officials admit that much of this comes from people who've Googled "Seattle Traffic" in search of local reunion concerts of the seminal 1960's Steve Winwood-fronted band.)
Until now they've been optimized for large-screen displays, but most people don't consult their notebook PCs during the commute. After all, you could end up having an explosion in your lap!
These new versions, available here, are small gifs, ideal the small screens of mobile phones.
Real-time traffic from WSDOT was already available in a mobile phone version of Google Maps--however, we've tried it and it's wonky. This seems to work much better.
After Seattlest zips home via our newly-optimized route, we'll be heading down to our local traffic jam to wave merrily at the celly-less riff raff that crowd the highways, oblivious to the multi-car accident ahead of them.
Yet another step toward the sharply divided caste system Seattlest was launched to advocate!
