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Tech

Twitter me TTC (Service Interruptions)

Posted by Jerrold Litwinenko / December 23, 2008

31 Comments

ttc twitterTwitter. It's certainly all the rage these days. Much like we were with Facebook, Toronto tech types are keen adopters of the tool that is Twitter... so much so that we've put our city into the higher ranks of global users.

One Toronto techie, Brian Gilham, has done something that the TTC should have done long ago. He's figured out a way to relay the publicly accessible TTC status update RSS feed to a Twitter account. And his unofficial workaround appears to be working.

It's pretty straightforward. Every 5 minutes, the TTC's service disruption feed is checked, and relayed to the TTCupdates Twitter Feed (and truncated to meet the max. 140 character Tweet restriction).

iPhone users that have mobile Twitter applications can follow this feed and near real-time notices of service disruptions will appear within their stream.

Granted, this simple tool would be so much more effective had Twitter not been forced to stop offering outgoing SMS (text) service in Canada a while back. Were the Canadian telecoms not so greedy, we would be able to automatically get service interruptions sent to us via Twitter (rather than having to manually check for them, as we do now).

If Twitter can somehow restore outgoing SMS in the future, Brian's simple TTCupdate feed will be an invaluable resource to Toronto transit users. In the meantime, we'll just have to check in before heading to catch the streetcar or subway.

Note: for transit users not equipped with iPhones and mobile Twitter apps, Brian has also set up a simple database that logs service disruptions and posts them to a mobile-friendly web page.

Photo by chewie2008~

Discussion

31 Comments

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Brian Gilham / December 23, 2008 at 05:19 pm
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Thanks for taking notice of my little project, Jerrold! I'll be actively improving TTCupdates as time goes on and welcome any comments or suggestions anyone may have. I can be reached at me@briangilham.com.

Cheers!
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Andrew / December 23, 2008 at 05:46 pm
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It's too bad Twitter doesn't send SMS's anymore to Canadian mobiles.
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serah-marie / December 23, 2008 at 05:53 pm
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Seriously brilliant. Such a useful application of Twitter.
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Jerrold / December 23, 2008 at 06:05 pm
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I'm still really peeved that SMS in Twitter is gone. The utility of Twitter is halved without SMS notification.
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Sarah Roger / December 23, 2008 at 06:05 pm
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With less frequent tweets than Toronto Fire Updates http://twitter.com/tofire
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Jerrold / December 23, 2008 at 06:07 pm
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Toronto Fire 2 is better... only relays 2+ alarm calls: http://twitter.com/tofire2
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Zuzu / December 23, 2008 at 06:10 pm
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Jerrold and Andrew... I agree, I miss text messages!! None of my friends use twitter anymore because of the SMS issue so it's lost a bit of it's charm for me.
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k / December 23, 2008 at 07:09 pm
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amazing. thank you. i'm adding this right now - i've been chattering about it for a few months now, wondering, why doesn't the ttc use it instead of its website!? much easier.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Jerrold / December 23, 2008 at 07:43 pm
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You and me both, brother. Twitter says they are working on a solution. Let's hope it comes soon!
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Brian Gilham / December 23, 2008 at 07:50 pm
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@serah-marie: Thank you for your kind words. Brilliant might be a little much though ;-)

@zuzu: I use Twitter through an application on my BlackBerry, so it wasn't a huge loss for me. However, it's because of those without a BlackBerry or an iPhone that I set up the mobile-friendly page. Hopefully we'll have SMS back again soon.

@k: Thanks!
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Andrew / December 24, 2008 at 10:19 am
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"Service Alert: Scarborough RT

A section of the Scarborough RT service is currently shut down from Kennedy Station to McCowan Station. Shuttle buses are in service.

Last updated at 5:57 AM"

I still see no update on your service, maybe it crashed?
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Andrew / December 24, 2008 at 10:25 am
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I just made an RSS feed of the TTC alert feed, here's hoping it stays alive
http://feedity.com/rss.aspx/ttc-ca/VVRbVlI
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ME / December 24, 2008 at 10:58 am
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FYI - not just iPhones. Twitter clients on Nokia S60 phones will run in the background and vibrate to alert you of an incoming tweets.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Andrew / December 24, 2008 at 10:59 am
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The TTC posted that alert to the site, but not to their RSS feed. Unfortunately, TTCupdates is at the mercy of whatever the TTC decides to post.
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Laurence / December 24, 2008 at 11:00 am
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http://www.299bloorcallcontrol.comI created "TTCstatus" a long time ago with this intent. I even linked up the RSS feed from the TTC's official status, but due to the nature of Twitterfeed and checking only once every half an hour, usually the delay is already cleared by the time it gets Tweeted.

I suggested to Adam Giambrone awhile ago to just equip someone in Transit Control with a Blackberry and Tweet out from there... he brushed off this practical, inexpensive solution and instead eluded to this magical SMS/text alert system they're developing with their Web 1.01 website.

I usually post TTC service alerts I hear of onto my Twitter (larrylarry). I suggest though, that perhaps this can be a community effort, and everyone and anyone should post any TTC delays they see with the hashtag, #ttcalert
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Andrew / December 24, 2008 at 11:00 am
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That's great! I assume you're screen-scraping the TTC site. I chose to not take that route because any change to the TTC site would potentially kill the feed. It's great to see people getting into it though.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Laurence / December 24, 2008 at 11:02 am
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Laurence, I've been thinking about the exact same idea. I might look into creating a community site for TTC updates, employing the #ttc hashtag. Probably something along the lines of http://electopinion.ca/. Let me know what you think!
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Brian Gilham / December 24, 2008 at 11:07 am
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To address the concerns regarding the difference between the TTC site and TTCupdates, I've added a note to the TTCupdates site.
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Laurence replying to a comment from Brian Gilham / December 24, 2008 at 11:09 am
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I very much like that idea with hashtags:

#ttc
#ttcalert
#ttcrants
#ttcraves
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Jerrold / December 24, 2008 at 11:10 am
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blogTO also made a similar effort, and found that Twitterfeed update frequency just wasn't often enough to work (20-30min delay) so we abandoned the project.

We've been doing our best to relay TTC delays via the <a href="http://twitter.com/blogto";>blogTO Twitter feed</a>, but without SMS notification it's easy to miss them.

Agreed on a community, collective effort using #ttc as a hashtag! Brian, can you add the #ttc hashtag to all of your TTCupdates relays? I'll do the same in manual blogTO TTC relays.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Jerrold / December 24, 2008 at 11:13 am
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Jerrold, I'll look into adding the hashtag, absolutely! It's tough to keep some of the alerts short enough as it is, but I'll see if I can come up with a solution.
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Mark Pavlidis / December 24, 2008 at 11:26 am
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I've been tweeting #ttc and #routenumber (i.e., #504) with the delays or lack of the past few weeks since I started to take the TTC regularly. Good to see it's catching on. Community effort at it's best

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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Mark Pavlidis / December 24, 2008 at 12:02 pm
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That's great! I've been talking back and forth with Laurence on Twitter and we might be coming up with a community-based solution to reporting TTC delays.
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MER1978 / December 24, 2008 at 12:11 pm
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Screw twitter... the TTC should allow you to subscriber to general service status mobile updates or even route service status mobile updates.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from MER1978 / December 24, 2008 at 12:20 pm
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I don't think anyone here will disagree with you! This is merely an attempt to get the information out there in as many ways as possible until the TTC can catch up.

Implementing an easy-to-view, mobile-friendly page is dead simple but they still haven't done that either. Unless I've managed to miss it, of course.
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Joe Clark / December 24, 2008 at 01:52 pm
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Fundamentally there is a data problem here in that there is no field for severity of disruption or for the time when the disruption was cleared. Those fields would have to exist at the source, of course.
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Andrew replying to a comment from Brian Gilham / December 24, 2008 at 04:04 pm
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Yup, screen scraped.

So what if they change the site, then you can just update your app?
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Shawn Micallef / December 24, 2008 at 05:41 pm
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Larry's #ttc or #ttcalerts would be great...I'd put my faith in the crowd before I put it with the TTC.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Shawn Micallef / December 24, 2008 at 11:43 pm
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I'm with you on that one, Shawn. I'm going to be putting some thought and development into a community-based solution over the holidays. I'll be sure to let everyone in on whatever I come up with.
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Me / April 14, 2009 at 12:23 am
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Just to let everyone know, this NO longer works. Brian Gilham reports that Facebook may have "caught on" to his unofficial workaround.

Well, it was good while it lasted.
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Brian Gilham replying to a comment from Me / April 14, 2009 at 07:00 am
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While it's true that we've been experiencing problems with our little Facebook "hack", TTCupdates is still alive and well both at http://ttcupdates.com and through the two Twitter accounts.
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