Objectives:

(1)  Provide access to City Data via simple mobile Text-Messaging interface.

(2)  Emphasize ease of use so that requests for data can be made using Natural Language (Ex: “show me interesting events on Tuesday”)

(3)  Provide feedback mechanism (much like 311 iPhone App) so that users can report on problems to the city (ex: “Fallen Tree on Broadway and 63rd Street”). This data is saved and can be made available to the City Agencies for use.

 Demo: 

For demo purposes you can send a TXT Message to nycsamosa@gmail.com or send an email to the same address or use the website: http://nycsamosa.appspot.com/static/sms.html which allows you to simulate sending a TXT message and displays back the same results on the web.

Long-term we envision users actually texting to 311(or another number) directly.

 Current Feature List:

 (1)  Find Laundromats, Parking, Sidewalk Cafes and Wifi spots near you.  Location is determined from user entered address. Results also include a digital map sent as an image to your phone.

(2)  View current Alternate Parking Holiday schedule

(3)  Get a listing and details for City Events on a given date

(4)  Get Traffic Updates that effect your route.  The input to calculation is user entered source and destination.

 Future:

For commercialization purposes we plan to expand Natural Language processing so that user can truly ask questions in any form.  Expand data sets to cover all data that is appropriate to make available on a quick TXT-based interface.  This is a prototype, long-term we envision users sending messages to 311 using a gateway.  This significantly improves Quality of Service because we will bypass the SMS-to-email overhead completely.