Special Report: Palm Reading

Unfolding a way to making MBTA schedules easier to read and understand. That’s what Harvard student Jason Karamchandani and his former roommate are doing.

The duo teamed up to write a unique software program called 'Shuttlegirl' which converts public transportation schedules into free downloadable files for palm pilots.

Jason Karamchandani, Harvard Student/Inventor
"I think this came into being in the form that it is because we were just two college students kind of having a good time, doing this for fun, so we where not afraid to try new technologies."

What started with the Harvard shuttle bus schedule and expanded to the MBTA commuter rail has now, literally taken off.

Kevin Choset, Shuttlegirl User
"You tell it what station your at, you pull down another list of what station you want to go to you hit ok and it tells you how to get there. It’s a no brainer."

A no brainer for users and for transpiration departments around the country who are purchasing the software

Mike Mulhern, General Manager, MBTA
"Big part of making our service more convenient for our customers is making sure they have good information at their fingertips."

Which can make commuting by public transportation virtually hassle free.

Jason Karamchandani
"I like seeing people use this, I like seeing things simplified, its nice to see people take advantage of the resources out there."

Along with helping commuters, they've helped themselves.

Jason Karamchandani
"It’s been a real blast for my roommate and I to put this together, for a while we where doing school at the same time of going from city to city doing presentations."

Which has paid off, come May Jason will not only graduate Harvard with a degree in life science, he will already have a successful career 'mapped' out.

The MBTA tells us that it hopes to have bus and ferry schedules available to palm users by this summer.

For more information:
Click here to go the MBTA site to download palm schedules 
Click here for secondkiss wireless, the creator of ShuttleGirl