Using HopStop to Get Around in Your City
February 5, 2010 by Ramon B. Nuez Jr.
Filed under Featured Content, iPhone Apps
Hopstop is a privately held company that was established in 2005. The company is headquartered in NYC and was founded by Chinedu Echeruo. Hopstop provides a wonderful service — public transit directions. The information is free and customizable which makes it a valuable resource. Currently, Hopstop provides transit directions in — New York, Long Island, Metro North, New Jersey, Boston, Providence, Hartford, CT (new), Philadelphia, Delaware (new), Baltimore (new), Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco (updated), London and Paris. Hopstop also provides other services like City Guide, Mobile, My Hopstop and Maps. The service that I use most often is Mobile Hopstop for the iPhone.
NYC can be a very difficult city to navigate — whether that be by car, bus or train. As such, many new Yorker’s prefer taking the subway. New York City’s transit system moves 1.6 million riders, annually over 840 miles of tracks, 365 days a year — you can now see why Hopstop is such a great resource for a New Yorker.
The Hopstop application can be downloaded to your iPhone from the App Store. You will immediately notice a simple and clean user interface.
The most convenient option of the application is how the “Starting Address” and the “Destination Address” are pulled from from your iPhone Contacts (otherwise you can enter it manually). “Options” and “Departure” selections are simple to use. “Options” allows you to make choices on the method of travel, i.e. bus only, walking only, etc. “Departure” simply sets the time you would like to leave — this is helpful when catching a train on the LIRR or Metro North.
The “Map” selection is rather useful. If you don’t know what trains are in the area you can pull up an address from your Contacts (or enter it manually). Once this information is entered you will see a map with what trains are in the area.
What I would like to see in future releases of Hopstop is an integration with other services like Yelp, Foursquare or Gowalla.
Pros: Very easy to use. The ability to pull the addresses from your iPhone Contacts is very useful.
Cons: It does not support landscape mode. It does not save your directions — although it does keep (not save) your last directions.
Author: Ramon B. Nuez Jr. (53 Articles)
Ramon is a contributing writer to The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/ramon-nuez). He covers the net neutrality debates, broadband ubiquity and the emergence of new media. Ramon has also guest lectured at the NYU School of Continuing Education -- on social media, social networks and new media. In collaboration with Zev Green of Co-Founder of GoFamous and Robert Holmes of RobbeTheGeek.Com -- Ramon is producing a podcast called New Media Brief. In this podcast the three will be discussing topics ranging from social media to new media to personal technology. Ramon is a firm advocate of Charity: Water. He strongly believes in Scott Harrison’s message and purpose. In 2009 he ran a personal but small campaign to raise money for Charity: Water.