How do you create public-service software? Run a contest.
In recent years, city governments have increasingly used that model to spur software developers to build apps they do not have the budget or brainpower to create themselves. Public agencies put data online and offer cash prizes. Developers write code. The resulting apps help guide residents through city government, or around the city. New York, with its wealth of data sets and developers, has taken to this enthusiastically with its BigApps competition, currently in Version 3.0.
Now it is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s turn. Last year, the authority posted information about train and agency performance, escalator status, turnstile traffic on the subways, bridge and tunnel plaza traffic, and more, then invited app developers to do what they could with it. The ensuing contest, called the M.T.A. App Quest, spawned 42 projects competing for $15,000 in cash prizes. The entries include apps for every major mobile platform (yes, even BlackBerry and Windows Mobile), e-mail services and Web sites. A panel of judges will pick most of the winners, but there are two popular choice awards…
Some of the apps are clearly in the early stages of development. This is common for app contests, said Brandon Kessler of ChallengePost, which is running the authority’s competition and has handled more than 200 similar contests. Software developers often say it is best to release an imperfect product and improve it gradually with feedback from users…
Some of the most intriguing apps are for regular old computers. The Web site 88 Yards allows you to click on any subway station and see Yelp’s highest-ranked bar and restaurant within a block. Convenient, but if ever a service screamed out to be a mobile app rather than a Web site, this is it.
RailBandit has other apps, but its contest entry is a hypnotic simulation of 24 hours on the New York subways, with hundreds of dots representing trains shooting up and down the lines of the subway map. The dots plod along in the early morning, gain steam as the city wakes up, speed through the afternoon and slow down after dark. I could find no practical purpose for it, but found it very satisfying to sit back and let the subways roll by.
Apps which encourage you to sit on your butt and observe the labors of others are always popular. 
