By now, you know that I love writing about Google Chrome extensions that solve locally relevant problems.
The last one I talked about solved a problem that most people don’t have. The one I will show you today attempts to solve a problem that EVERY lives in Lagos, isn’t a housebound hermit and doesn’t own a helicopter has. Tsaboin’s new Google Chrome extension pulls real time Lagos traffic updates into your browser.
Tsaboin is a service that lets users monitor traffic activity, so they can make smarter decisions about how to move. Traffic information is crowdsourced in realtime from the platform’s users who report the traffic they are currently experiencing. Tsaboin’s platform is designed around the concept of bus stops, which it defines as the smallest unit of spatial context description, where Lagos traffic is concerned. The service is available via web and on virtually all major mobile platforms.
To use the Chrome extension, you’ll need to sign up. That is if you haven’t already. If you already use Tsaboin, you would simply enter your login details, and you would be all set after a couple of screens to configure your update preferences.
Bringing traffic updates to the browser is probably also a nod to the fact that quite a lot of people in Lagos, particularly the ones that are likely to search for traffic updates, access the internet from their work PCs. The biggest advantage here is that one need not visit Tsaboin.com to use the service.
It’s easy to see how people who work around say, Ahmadu Bello Way on Victoria Island could use this to keep an eye on certain routes — so they know if they should head home earlier or make a detour to Silverbird Cinemas until after traffic at Bonny Camp has cleared up.
Tsaboin’s Google Chrome extension and installation instructions can be found in the Chrome Store.
