Doors Open Toronto goes mobile

With spring well underway, close to 150 buildings of architectural, historic, cultural and social significance opened their doors to the public this past weekend for Doors Open Toronto. Doors Open “allows visitors free access to properties that are either not usually open to the public, or would normally charge an entrance fee. Many locations have organized guided tours, displays and activities to enrich the visitor experience.”

The challenge in participating in Doors Open Toronto is knowing which buildings are open to the public. The City of Toronto has provided a list of this years participating buildings, but at the time of publishing, their list wasn’t mobile device-friendly.

Fortunately, a solution wasn’t too far behind.

“This is the second anniversary of the Doors Open application”, said Brian Gilham, the Espresso-fueled, Toronto-based developer behind TTCUpdates and TaskAve. “In 2010, the City of Toronto released a Doors Open Toronto data set. I felt that this was the most interesting data set the City released; for me, building a mobile web application was really just an excuse for me to play with the data.” The technology behind the application consists of jQTouch, a jQuery plugin that allows developers to create interfaces and animations for mobile devices such as the iPhone, the iPod and Android. “This year, I wanted to release the application again; I took a look at the original iteration, and I felt that I could make some pretty big improvements. I coded the new application in 24 hours and released it in time for Doors Open.”

Screenshots of the Doors Open iPhone web application

Integration into BIXI‘s service was a feature Brian had hoped to include before launching the application on Friday, but he simply ran out of time. “Even though BIXI doesn’t have any open data sets, they do have an XML feed that allows me to see where the bike stands are, how many bikes they have remaining, and other data. I had hoped to give users of this application the ability to find venues with nearby BIXI stations so that they could plan an outing on a bicycle, but I didn’t have time to build it out the way I wanted to.”

“I have to give credit to David Wallace for pushing open data at the City of Toronto”, said Gilham of the City’s open data efforts. “Apps like RocketRadar are an example of what can be done with open data. The Web Team at the City is trying hard, and they’re doing a great job. I can see and appreciate the challenges they’re up against; making more data sets available is not as simple as just uploading data to the website. Getting the right stakeholders involved in very important. Where I see an opportunity is for the City to move beyond encouraging developers to build applications. The City needs to bring in the public and ask them what they’re looking for in terms of data.”

So what’s next for the Doors Open mobile web application? “I would love to work with the city to build a native mobile application, and not just for the iPhone. If I can’t make that happen, I’d be interested in partnering up with a few other developers and building something that takes advantage of the features of the iPhone or Android devices.”

Brian wouldn’t comment specifically on his next application-related project, but did have this to say about a personal project he’s taking up this summer: “As far as my next project goes, I’m putting down the keyboard, and picking up a beer. I encourage everyone to get in on that project.”

Well, hey. We’ll drink to that.