Popular Shuttleboy Program In Limbo

The "shuttleboy" program, which helped students find the three next shuttle arrival times at their favorite stops, is currently on hiatus and may face a permanent shutdown in the future, its creator said yesterday.

Shuttleboy's creator, David J. Malan '99, wrote the program for his friends last fall, but the service soon gained campus-wide popularity. Available by typing "shuttleboy" or "sb" at the fas prompt in telnet, it lists the next three times different shuttle routes will pick up at points around campus.

All in all, the program was used 20,387 times last year by Harvard students, according to Malan.

Carl A. Tempesta, a spokesperson for Harvard Shuttle Services, described shuttleboy as "an excellent asset to the undergraduate population."

The program is currently off-line so that the shuttle schedule can be updated for the new school year, but there is a serious risk that it may go off-line again--for good this time, according to Malan.

Though the Shuttleboy program was accessible across campus, it resides only in Malan's personal account on the college's FAS servers. So, under the current arrangement, when Malan's affiliation with Harvard ends, shuttleboy will disappear.

Malan graduated last year, but has retained his FAS affiliation by taking a position teaching computer science at the Harvard Extension School.

And so Malan will keep his FAS computer account for now. But Malan says he is likely to leave the extension school within a year or two.

Then, Malan says, shuttleboy will be taken off-line unless Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) decides to assume responsibility for the program.

Rick Osterberg '96, coordinator of residential computing at HASCS, said his organization had decided not to allow shuttleboy onto their servers because they didn't want the hassle of maintaining and supporting the program.

"We have a limited staff and budget, and our primary duties are keeping systems up and running, keeping e-mail flowing. That's a task in itself," he said.

Osterberg said that the program requires someone to update information in the program manually every time the shuttle schedule changes, in addition to any other support issues that might arise.

However, Malan said that the work involved in supporting the program would not be an issue, for both he and the Harvard Computer Society (HCS) have agreed to support the program themselves.

"Both I and HCS explicitly expressed willingness to maintain and support the program ourselves," Malan wrote in an e-mail message, "provided HASCS simply installed the program on the public systems."

Malan said the process "would take only seconds."

Another alternative would be to shift the shuttleboy program to another student's account. But Malan said each time the program changes hands, each shuttleboy user would have to reconfigure their account--making this option impractical.

"It's unfortunate that HASCS refuses to make publicly available a program that has proved valuable to hundreds of Harvard Students," Malan wrote.

"Making shuttleboy publicly available places the Harvard Shuttle schedules into the hands of every student on campus with access to a networked computer, which is a plus for convenience, as well as for campus safety," he added.

Waiting for a shuttle to the Radcliffe Quadrangle at Johnston Gate yesterday afternoon, Benjamin Z. Galper '02, said he wished the program were up and running now.

"It would actually be nice [if shuttleboy were working]," he said "as I forgot to pick up a printed schedule. At breakfast, I had no idea when the next shuttle was, so I had to rush out to wait for one."