New feature: submit updates to cltraffic yourself
The current automated traffic reports are working well, but they suffer from 2 limitations that I see:
- They can’t be updated more than twice an hour, because this is the most that twitterfeed will allow, and
- They’re really impersonal, like some kind of robot wrote them.
So I’m opening cltraffic up to the people to work around these issues. Now you’ll be able to send traffic updates by sending a reply in the form of “@cltraffic report [stuff]” to Twitter. For example, if you see a disabled vehicle on Tryon Street, you can post “@cltraffic report breakdown N Tryon and 5th Street” and it will go out to everyone. Updates will go out every 5 minutes if there’s something new reported.
There are 3 things you should know about this:
- The tweet that cltraffic sends out will be tagged [unverified], because really anyone with a Twitter account can send updates and we can’t verify them all.
- The tweet will also have your Twitter username attached for accountability purposes.
- Remember that people get text messages every time someone posts to the cltraffic account. Try not to waste their money or spam them, we don’t all have unlimited texting.
I had fun writing this feature, but it’s not going to work unless people use it and use it well. My ideal would be to have such good information coming directly from local Charlotte people that I can shut off the automated reports. Help make it relevant!
Finally, thanks to the folks at Summize. I don’t think this would have gone so smoothly or quickly if it weren’t for their great API.
