Category Archives: Technology

Googling The Bus

Yet another reason to get on the bus in Pittsburgh: today’s Post-Gazette reports that Burghers can now search for Port Authority bus routes and schedules via Google Transit, a new service being offered in only six cities.

Port Authority has offered a trip planner on their website for some time, but Google’s service combines scheduling with a map of your route, and in the future could include information such as money saved versus driving and parking, as well as total cost of fare for your trip.

The service is in its beginning stages, and Google is asking for feedback from users to help improve results. Play around with it and let them know what you’d like to see.

Updated PAT website

The Port Authority of Allegheny website has been updated and it’s soooooo much better than the old version. The trip planner appears on the first page, and you can now buy bus passes and tickets online. I like the fact that you can buy packages of 10 tickets, so you can always have some handy on your person whenever you get stuck in a pinch or you don’t have without correct change.

I know a lot of folks rag on the bus, but I just started working downtown, and I live minutes away from a bus route that takes me directly there. It beats $15 parking anyday. And it gives me time to listen to music, read a book and generally decompress after work. I’m a bus nerd.

By the way, the tickets and passes work for the incline and trolley too. I also found these helpful guidelines to follow if you choose to Rack’n’Roll! er … take your bike on your commute:

Here are some helpful and important guidelines to follow…
• Stand by your bike at the bus stop so the driver knows you intend to board.
• Tell the driver you’ll be loading your bike.
• Remove loose items like water bottles, pumps, etc.
• Load and unload your bike from the curb or in front.
• Place the wheels in the proper slots which are clearly labeled.
• Raise and secure the support arm over the top of the tire.
• Sit near the front of the bus.
• As you approach your stop, tell the driver you’ll be unloading your bike.

Commuting to work, getting to class, or taming the urban landscape is a lot easier when you don’t have to contend with Pittsburgh’s famous traffic, steep hills, tunnels and bridges. The following bus routes, which lead to some of the most popular destinations for bikers, are equipped with easy-to-use front bike racks that can hold two bicycles (two-wheeled, non motorized bike).

11D Perrysville
21A Coraopolis
54C North-Oakland-South Side
71A Negley
77D Highland-Friendship
77F Morningside-Friendship
77G Stanton Heights-Friendship
500 Highland Park-Bellevue

Git Help Aht: Donate Your Old Computer This Saturday At Heinz Field

It sits in your home office or game room… 50-plus lurking pounds of heavy metal, (Dude! Rawk Aht! What? Oh, sorry… go on…) plastic and other stuff that really shouldn’t go to a landfill, right below a gargantuan monitor that is so old it occasionally picks up transmissions from the 1939 World’s Fair, and a keyboard that when typed on makes a sound like gunfire clacking up in the hollow and you just know that the Hatfields and The McCoys are a-gonna tussle agin’.

Look, it’s not doing you or anybody else any good right now – you’ve long-since upgraded to the Quad-Processor 1.21 jigawatt monstrosity that will let you buy tasteful clothing with incredible ease, allow you to IM with your no-good layabout friends (OMG! STFU!), and even, perhaps, get some friggin’ work done every once in a while. Your new monitor is one of those fancy-pants LCD types which you could hang on a wall and lift with one hand. So the silicon behemoth collects dust, like some long-forgotten relic of a bygone age.

What to do, what to do… You can’t bury it in the back yard, because you know you’ll lie awake at night slowly going mad, the ticking of it’s internal processor clock like some modern-day tell-tale heart reminding you that burying all those chemicals in the ground just ain’t right. You tried to pawn it off on the neighborhood kids and they just chuckled at you, speeding away on their skateboards, listening to “Panic! At The Disco” on their iPod Nanos. Hell, even your mom turned her nose up at it, and she still can’t quite grasp the whole “cut-and-paste foolishness”, bless her heart…

goodwill_logoSo donate it to Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh. This Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Heinz Field, in Alco Parking Lot #2, you can donate all of your old computer equipment. This is a new program, a partnership between Goodwill and Dell Computers, and they’re doing a Good Thingâ„¢. They’ll even clean your hard drive to Department of Defense standards for free, saving you $20 that day only! Hell, you don’t even need to get out of your car.

They’re going to refurbish any computers that are in decent shape and resell them to raise money for local Goodwill programs. Any computers that can’t be refurbished, or are simply too old will be salvaged for any valuable parts and then disposed of properly, diverting up to 2.1 million pounds of waste from area landfills. The whole program will help up to 100 of your fellow Pittsburghers transition from welfare to work.

So, those are good reasons to do it right there. But wait, there’s more… (Isn’t there always?)

Steelers Quarterback and all-around good human Charlie Batch (See: All the good work he’s done for kids in his hometown of Homestead and throughout the area) is slated to be there helping out from 10-11 a.m. You can register for prizes including a flat-panel tv and gift cards, get a tax write-off for next year, free up some space in your house, and most importantly, drive away knowing that just by dropping off your old, unwanted computer, you helped aht in Pittsburgh. Think Globally, Act Locally… n’at.

This event is sponsored by Goodwill, Dell Computers, City of Pittsburgh’s Pittsburgh Partnership and Allegheny County.

Pittsburgh Genius show debuts July 3rd @ 7PM

Pittsburgh Genius is a cable television production that profiles the amazing world-class research being conducted in the Pittsburgh region. Each 30-minute mini-documentary will introduce you to one of Pittsburgh’s most creative and insightful minds. In addition to in-depth researcher interviews, viewers will also get behind-the-scenes laboratory tours and real-life demonstrations of what each researcher is working onâ€â€?an insider’s view of Pittsburgh research you will get nowhere else.

See the show on Pittsburgh Community TV Comcast Cable Channel 21. The show will also be available as downloadable Quicktime video and video podcast, too.

The first episode of Pittsburgh Genius will debut on PCTV21 on Monday, July 3 at 7:00PM, and will be repeated throughout the month of July. Look for a new episode each month.

More information and the full schedule may be found at http://www.pittsburghgenius.com

Tell your favorite stories of Pittsburgh…

…or ask someone to tell you theirs!

StoryCorps has arrived in Pittsburgh, and will stay until July 2! I first heard about StoryCorps on NPR, and I love the concept. Here’s a blurb from their website www.storycorps.net to explain the project:

StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others’ stories in sound. We’re here to help you interview your grandmother, your uncle, the lady who’s worked at the luncheonette down the block for as long as you can rememberâ€â€?anyone whose story you want to hear and preserve.

We have two traveling recording studios, called MobileBooths, which embarked on cross-country tours on May 19, 2005. We’ve tried to make the experience as simple as possible: We help you figure out what questions to ask. We handle all the technical aspects of the recording. At the end of the hour-long session, you get a copy of your interview on CD. Since we want to make sure your story lives on for generations to come, we’ll also add your interview to the StoryCorps Archive, housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, which we hope will become nothing less than an oral history of America.

Sign-ups for the last two weeks of recording are open tomorrow – June 9 at 10:00 am. If you have someone in mind that you want to interview call 1-800-850-4406 or sign-up online at http://www.storycorps.net/participate/record_an_interview/locations/ Be sure to sign up right away. Time slots go fast!

Make your Pittsburgh story part of this great project!