IT TOOK Ben Hosken 1½ days to create an application about Sydney Buses that people wanted to use. It took the government two weeks to close it down.

In February, Mr Hosken was given access to live traffic information that provided, at two-minute intervals, live updates of where State Transit buses sat on Sydney roads.

Dead ... An app that allowed users to follow buses on their paths through the city received more than 200,000 views in the two weeks it was live. Credit:James Alcock

The government had thrown open the information two weeks before an ''app day'' it hosted on February 19 ''for developers and public servants to come together and make web apps using NSW government data''.

Through his firm Flink Labs, Mr Hosken took less than two days to turn the information, collected by the Roads and Traffic Authority using GPS tags on buses into an application allowing users to follow buses on their paths through the city.