More than 200 app developers will be given full access to National Rail Enquiries (NRE) live departures information services as part of Microsoft’s Hack Day competition, to be held on Saturday 11 June in London.
The day will see participants given access to information services from four organisations in total as a way of coming up with interesting and innovative applications.
There is a £1,000 prize for the best overall app.
Hack days encourage innovation and are one of the ways that NRE engages with the developer community.
NRE is constantly looking to work with new developers who come up with ideas for apps and who see a market for obtaining a licence from NRE’s information services.
To date, NRE has agreed over 70 licences with developers that provide information about rail services, including 30 mobile phone apps. NRE has licensed apps such as the Train Times UK app and the Rail Planner Live app.
Chris Scoggins, Chief Executive of NRE, said:
“The hack day provides a great forum for developers to work on our information services to see what new ideas they can come up with.
“Since we began licensing apps a few years ago, we’ve dealt with numerous individual developers who have gone on to produce highly successful programmes that are used more than a hundred thousand times a day.
“But we’re always open to new ideas and keen to work with developers to bring to the market good ideas for apps that will make rail travel quicker and easier for the millions of people who catch a train every day.”
The other organisations supporting the day are PayPal, Bing Maps and Huddle.
