So when he visits me I rather enjoy the way some of his traits and habits permeate my rather more stereotypical 40-something-year-old habits. This is probably most noticeable in the way we travel around Singapore. He loves using the buses because he likes to see what’s going on which you don’t of course on the MRT (Singapore’s underground rail network) and because they are cheaper than taxis. We did travel in the odd taxi but mostly we did a lot of ‘good world-citizen’ public transport taking.

Where I live is rather well served with buses and I have a bus interchange a few minutes walk away. Up until my brother’s visit I was familiar with only one route – the one that used to take me to and from Philips Design in Toa Payoh where I used to work. But this all changed with my brother’s visit.

So, it would go something like this: We’d make our plans for the day and then I’d grab my iPhone and go to gothere.sg, let the GPS locator to discover where I was and then key in our desired location. (I’ve written before about the wonderful folks at gothere.sg and they deserve all my plaudits and more.)

Then the application would tell us what bus to take, when it would arrive, how much it would cost and how many stops. Fantastic. And, of course, with all that on my iPhone finding our next route when out and about was just as easy. Then, when waiting at the bust stops, another application – tranSGuide – would give us all the ‘live’ arrival times of all the services.

None of this is new of course. GPS, the iPhone, iPhone applications and route planning have all been around for a while. But there was a quite simple yet quite powerful feeling that hit me when I was looking at how to get to one of our next destinations the other day. And it was simply the fact that here was information in my hand right there and then, personalized for our particular requirements at that particular time and consequently it was information that was really really useful.

Programmers and application developers can do all sorts with technology and information. It’s identifying the context, the user’s specific needs, the location, the user interface, the ‘results’ presentation and all those other bits and pieces that turn technology into something truly wonderful – something a lot of technology companies and software developers in the travel industry and everywhere else might want to make a note of.

 Featured image credit (Singapore: Street Traffic): Ockra/iStock