I am boon

The new Barclays Cycle Hire scheme has been getting a lot of attention lately, and there are apps and sites out there that already allow you to locate cycle stations around London.

Since I’m one of those individuals who doesn’t carry an iPhone around, there’s not much choice for locating cycle hire stations on my trusty Blackberry. So, I decided to hack up a mobile website a few days ago to do just that.

So, currently the site allows you to:

• search by postcode (e.g. SW1 2AA, SW12AA, or even part-postcode like SW1)
• search by tube station (e.g. ‘oxford’ will return oxford circus, etc.)
• view a small map of the cycle station
• see how far the stations are from your searched location
• ‘remember’ your 5 most recently viewed stations
• ALSO, if you have a mobile browser that can geo-locate you, you can get the list of stations closest to you (you’ll have to allow the site to use your browser’s geo-location capabilities)

The site is currently running at http://cyclehire.boonyew.com, but I’ve registered the http://cyclehi.com domain. Unfortunately, Netfirms is having some issues so I’m not sure when the domain will finally get sorted but in the meantime you can use the temporary address.

The station locations are based off the list provided by TfL, which has been obtained from TfL through a Freedom of Information request. I got it off @cyclehireapp’s site, so thanks, @cyclehireapp!

I’ve also registered a twitter account, which you can follow at @cyclehi.

Please leave feedback - I’d love to know how it’s working for you on your mobile phone!