Caltrain Tweets » Misc

Good samaritan needed and found

ravi — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:55:56 +0000

A rider used @caltrain this evening to send a SOS for a left bag and sure enough someone came through. How cool is that? Certainly a lot better than my failed attempt to recover my keys.

Look Ma, it works!

ravi — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:26:59 +0000

A lot of chatter on Caltrain today starting with a inquiry of a fatality at San Bruno. While it was not a fatality it did cause delays on the system which was communicated with diligence and discretion. Many thanks to everyone who provided a steady stream of updates which almost certainly help us plan our commute home.

I think I will file this under WIN for the service.

Minor update

ravi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:36:28 +0000

I am now tacking the received time by my server to the update sent to Twitter so people can have a frame of reference of when the update was actually made. This will help account for any network (net or mobile) delays and for the iPhone which does not let you get a time stamp for each SMS, but only what it considers a conversation. It will look like (emphasis added):

Caltrain 365 very slow/10 min late before milbrae T17:05

In other news it looks like I may be able to easly configure things so that you can send a direct message to either of the Twitter accounts and have them be used as the update. This means you will be able to SMS ‘d account update‘ to the Twitter SMS short code 40404. This ability is currently being used by a small group of people to help me iron out any bugs.

I’ll update as things roll out.

We have been Examined

ravi — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:33:31 +0000

I was contacted by Tamara Barak Aparton of The San Francisco Examiner yesterday afternoon about a piece she was writing about BART and Twitter. She came across the Caltrain feeds I setup and wanted to know more. Sadly I wasn’t able to get back to her before her deadline although there is mention in the article and URLs are provided.

Check out the article.