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Track Commuting Delays via Twitter with Commuter Feed
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 2:30 AM on February 13, 2008
Free social commuter alert service Commuter Feed harnesses the quick and brief nature of Twitter to offer commuters in major metro areas a way of avoiding train delays, subway break-downs, and other travel information in nearly-real time. The service has one of the most extensive lists of metro areas covered of its type, although each is only as useful as the number of dedicated Twitterers on their daily routes. If you know how to follow or reply on the micro-message service, you can easily join and submit to any metro area's feed, although how you handle the surfeit of Twits in the more populous areas is up to you. For similar community-driven commuter help, check out The Clever Commute.
AU - I checked out Commuter Feed's website and while it's set up to accommodate Australian users, so far only 1 tweet has been recorded in Sydney - about the fire at Broadway Shopping Centre which happened yesterday. It's good to know that it's there if we want to use it though!
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
fishlips20
Posted 3:29 AM 13/2/08
Very cool functionality - but the user community for my area is limited at best (2 updates in 3 days).
I'm sure this will become useful as more people start to use it.
fishlips20
britne
Posted 4:44 AM 13/2/08
No updates for my current metro area, or the one I'm moving to. Although I do like the concept... SMS alerts for bus delays would save me lots of headaches.
britne
ndbutter
Posted 5:49 AM 13/2/08
I'm with Wired Dude Dave...there's no Twitter user for just your metro area, so in order to see what's important to you, you have to go to the website. That's not very functional when you're in the car.
It'd be better if they had a Twitter user for each metro area, so I could just follow "commuterPHL" for example (since I'm in Philly). Or I could use the "get commuterPHL" command in a text message.
Looks like they have very few users at this point too, making it pretty unusable. It's a great idea though!
ndbutter
Wired Dude Dave
Posted 5:49 AM 13/2/08
i am not sure I get it... if I just wanted say SAN diego alerts the twitter feed would still give me EVERYTHING all over the USA. I'd have to pipe it through yahoo pipes, and subscribe to the rss feed via an rss to sms, or rss2im service. Am I missing something here?
Wired Dude Dave
Duane
Posted 6:59 AM 13/2/08
In order for this to work doesn't it imply that there's going to be lots more people sitting in traffic who are trying to SMS in their status to Twitter at the same time? Not sure I love that idea.
"Smooth sailing on Rt 128.....*crash*....Oh, crap, never mind. Accident in the left lane, somebody call me an ambulance."
Duane
[www.commutesmarter.com]
Duane
That_Bastid
Posted 7:59 AM 13/2/08
Yep...this will get people killed.
That_Bastid
alexbischoff
Posted 9:15 AM 13/2/08
@WIRED DUDE DAVE, @NDBUTTER: There're also RSS feeds for each locale (linked from the bottom of a given page), in case that may help.
alexbischoff
frisbee
Posted 9:15 AM 13/2/08
What a great idea to improve commutes. Encourage everyone on the road to text while driving. That should clean things right up.
frisbee
ajft
Posted 5:03 PM 13/2/08
Nice service, but it doesn't behave nice if you give it a "city" (IATA airport code) that it doesn't have data for, eg:
[www.commuterfeed.com]
ajft