Many communters in Singapore has been relying on mobile applications from the Android, Apple App Store and Blackberry to give them accurate bus timings. SBS Transit’s Iris (Intelligent Route Information System) now have decided to put the brakes on these third party apps which are able to pull data from its website.

How did SBS put the brakes?

SBS has use a captcha system to ensure that third party system cannot access the website. There is no problem for human like us as we just need to key in the validation code and submit.Robots from third party apps accessing the system will not be able to recognize the code and enter it to access the data.

Bus Timing Data
The IRIS is built to benefit the commuters. It is a system for us to access the bus timing so that we can plan our journey. If you are an iPhone users, you can still access the bus timing on SBS IRIS, the official app on the Apple App Store.

You can also access the IRIS on your Smart Phone by clicking below
http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/iris3/nextbus.aspx 

The real question is this satellite system fund by SBS or by LTA? If it is SBS, then they have every right to block other third party apps. But if it is by the government, then SBS is doing the wrong thing and LTA is not doing anything to stop it.