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Get Commuter Train Trouble Alert Delivered to Watch by IFTTT

In Coding, Web Apps on 17 January 2015 with no comments 119 views

Imagine getting alerts of Commuter Line train service disruption right on your wrist! Well, the watch thing isn’t a must as any SMS-enabled phone will do. But without the watch, I won’t be introduced to “If-this-than-that” (IFTTT), a simple logic line that glues popular apps into trigger and action branded as recipes. Anyone can code that line, a no-coding logic that cooks: sync wallpaper with Nat Geo’ instagram, volume goes up when Mom calls, change bulb light color after some space station moves, etc. As personal recipe, bring COOKOO connected watch to the table and I’ve leveraged public service disruption–no matter how ironic–into edgy personal business.

If this than that recipes alert for Commuter Train trouble

The ingredient is tweet, Twitter Search use case is no longer just sentiment analysis, its function extends to alert, even close to real time–I’m pretty optimistic given the number of Commuter Line users joining the conversation. Now, the no-code part of our recipe, a Twitter search query, that is

(to:krlmania OR @krlmania OR from:CommuterLine)
AND (gangguan OR pantograf OR wesel OR patah)
-semoga -smoga -moga

and a brief explanation is that it queries for some keywords for potential trouble within mentions/replies to @krlmania and official announcements of @CommuterLine. Exclusion added to the search, the sentiment part of tweets, expressing wishes to shoo trouble away–I’m sorry, but keep praying online anyway.

When Twitter launched Twitter Stories in 2011, I read about Ravi Pina running the crowd sourced @Caltrain. Later now I see that official accounts like @SMRT_Singapore is also a model of service disruption info center. We can go deeper to better stats from the API web service that shows real time position (an app is out there showing that the location data API is working), but until its open data status is known, crowd sourcing stays as the most reliable solution, independent to regulation, and easiest to implement. Does the recipe work? During the first week of testing, alerts were flooding–within limit of course–as trouble really happened. So, cook your own ingredients or get my recipes served here.