I posted about an interactive bus stop here. Now there’s another in Oxford Street with an interactive advertisement.

The screen showing the short video campaign, by children’s charity Plan UK, is located at a bus stop opposite Selfridges on Oxford Street.

A camera will measure facial features of the person standing at the screen to decide whether it is a man or a woman. It guesses right 90% of the time.

If it is a male, the screen will direct him to the charity’s campaign website.

The advertisement highlights the issue of women and girls in developing countries, who face poverty and discrimination, not getting the choice to decide how they want to lead their lives.

Males will not get to see the advertisement in order to make them aware about gender discrimination, the charity said.

The advert uses facial recognition software with an HD camera to determine whether a man or woman is standing in front of the screen, and shows different content accordingly.

Anne Robinson appears to have changed her name to Beverley Bell as the show tries to find the weakest link in First Bus Manchester. Appearing on the most recent episode of the show were 11 First managers including regional managing director David Alexander, three operations managers, an engineering director and two management trainees.

Almost immediately the target for acerbic comment was Richard Soper, Strategic Development Director North for First who was told “You are wasted in the bus industry. You should have gone into politics” and “You should be on Question Time, Mr Soper”. When he told Ms Robinson Bell that First Bus are “operating in difficult economic circumstances” her retort was “I don’t think I would be saying it’s difficult economic times if I made a profit of £14m”.

When asked why not one First Bus service had improved, Delivery Director Kenneth Poole, said: “They hadn’t got round to it.” Ms Robinson Bell responded “So when I go out to get a bus, in the freezing fog, on my way to a doctor’s appointment, it is in the knowledge that First Group with £14m profits hasn’t got round to it”.

“Were you not bothered about coming to a public inquiry and facing the wrath of the regulator? Don’t you think you should do something about it? This has been going on for a year. It is failing badly and you have done nothing about it. “If you hadn’t got round to it when you are facing the regulator, when are you going to get round to it?”

The next round of this series of The Weakest Link takes place in March when Ms Robinson Bell expects straight answers to her questions. Will the contestants be the same? Or, will we see new faces saying action has been taken and that First Bus are now correcting their errors?

You can read more here.

At first TfL insisted that the bus was taking a scheduled stop on the hard shoulder of the M1!! Why do PR people, I’m assuming that the spokesperson was from the PR department, have to turn a mildly embarrassing situation into one which makes them appear totally stupid? I assume they did concede that this wasn’t true when the breakdown truck arrived to tow it away. Then again, it may have been a scheduled recovery to test how the bus performed on the back of a tow truck :-) (I think I may a new career in PR ahead of me). I read this story on LBC.

If you like your bus news to have a left-wing bias you may be interested in Busworker.

One of the aims of the site is “…. to be a place for discussion, debates – and if necessary disagreement”. There’s not much evidence of that, I could only find one comment to a posting during the last 3 months.

I like their logo.

Swansea Council is wasting spending £35,000 of its concessionary (travel) fund to give all under 16’s free bus travel, any time, any day, any where, in Swansea for two and a half weeks over Christmas. What a complete waste of money, I’m glad I don’t pay my Council Tax to Swansea!

One aim of the scheme is “… to help families with a lot of children who want to come into the city centre to use facilities like the shops, leisure centre and Winter Wonderland.” I can empathise with that and if one of the conditions of travel were that the under 16 year old must travel with a parent I’d applaud the scheme. However, that’s not case so I’m sure the majority of free under 16 journeys will be made by 12 – 16 year olds travelling all over the place just for ‘something to do’.

A far better use of £35,000 of concessionary travel money would be to give school leaving registered job seekers free travel between 09:00 and 17:00 (likely interview times) in order for them to attend interviews or to just get out and knock on employer’s doors in order to find work.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve now got a smartphone. I’d not seen apps before but now I’m hooked on these little applications, many of which are free. I’ve bought just two, one of which is Catch That Bus at £1.99 Start the app and it immediately uses the phone’s GPS facility to present a map of your current location and all local bus stops.

You then zoom in on a chosen bus stop and tap the screen. The bus stop name and location is displayed.

Another tap on the screen and you’re presented with a menu.

Selecting ‘Show Departure Board’ shows all departures from the stop by time, service number, operator and destination.

‘Show Street View’ displays the Google street view so that you can reassure yourself that you really are where you think you are!

I score this app 10 out of 10.