There has been missing a native application to access information from Trafikanten on the Nokia N900. Instead it has been necessary to use the mobile version of their websites or maybe even the full version. Even though this is a pretty quick and workable solution, there are several benefits of having a native application available. One that becomes very obvious is the use of GPS to find all nearest bus stops or train stations.

Update:

The package was pushed to Extras testing on 2nd of October. It was delayed because Maemo’s package repository would not import the new package due to some trouble with the version numbering.

I decided to give it a try in June this year and started by releasing some early versions of what is now named “Journey Planner for Norway” (which is “Reiseplanlegger” in Norwegian). During the summer of 2010 I have been trying to improve the application over several iterations, and feel that it has now come to a point where it is usable and stable enough to get the infamous “Version 1.0” attached to it.

The application is now finding its way through to the Extras-devel catalogue for Maemo and will be pushed upwards through Extras-testing before it hopefully hits Extras within two or three weeks. In the meantime you might either be a bit careless and enable Extras-devel to use the bleeding edge 1.0 version or head over to Maemo Downloads to fetch the beta which will be automatically updated to 1.0 whenever it is ready.

Below you can check out some more screenshots of the application in action:

[gallery link=”file”]

The application is developed in C++ using Qt with the Qt Mobility libraries. It should not be too hard to port it to Symbian as well, so I will give that a shot in the future. Symbian users does however already have an option to use the Java application “Trafikanten Sanntid” made by Håvard Tegelsrud.

And of course, you can check out the source code here. The application is licensed with the GNU GPLv3 license.