I am indebted to Karen Blakeman who discovered that Brighton and Hove bus information may now be had through an iPhone app. My iPhone having settled down after the excitement of the upgrade to 3.1, I downloaded the app. My first impressions: it's very good. It works on data from the GPS gadgets on each bus, information that feed the displays at bus stops and a web page that has existed for several years. The routes and stops lend themselves well to the iPhone's touch-scrolling lists. Above all, it's free. I don't use buses so frequently now, as Brighton and Hove offer no Seaford to Wandsworth service, but at weekends it will be invaluable. I used buses regularly when I worked at BSMS, but then the bus data was only available on the web. There was a considerable delay between checking the bus times on my desktop machine, and arriving at the bus-stop, involving shutting down the computer, packing my bag, shutting the office and walking to the stop, in which time the situation could easily change.
A nostalgic aside: Karen discovered this in the Local Government Chronicle. Long ago it was my job to scan the LGC, and its rival the Municipal Journal, for references to Barnet council, for whom I then worked in the Hendon reference library. How I enjoyed browsing countless pictures of identical men in identical suits, recently appointed Head of Sanitary Services for Loamshire County Council or Director of Photocopiers at Slagtown District.