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Well, title does say it all, but I'll give a background to whom might interest.

This one day I was going the subway and a whole line stopped because of some literally freak accident. Everyone in there were taking pictures and most certainly at least few people there tweeted about it (I haven't checked, but I think there's no need to). So, most likely that became a trend, maybe even the most popular one for certain region.

Had I knew about this 30 minutes before I left home (and the accident was there for like 2 or 4 hours), it would have saved me a good half day walking the rest of the path.

So, just few moments ago I thought, "well, with all this technology, can't I get automatically notified on this kind of local event? Is it the only way to know it before hand by updating and actively browsing and checking Twitter?" Thus, this question.

Anyone got something?

Good notifications system I can think of are email and calendar-like.

2 Answers 2

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Traffic.com offers e-mail and SMS alerts for any driving routes you register.

As for Mass Transit, check with your local transit agency. A lot of them offer alerts. WMATA, for instance, offers e-mail alerts (which could be sent to your phone via your provider's e-mail SMS gateway) and also has a Twitter account to which they post alerts.

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  • Sounds good, but I wanted to go further and specifically use twitter. It wouldn't bring news just about traffic. :) - also Traffic.com is USA only. :(
    – cregox
    Oct 8, 2010 at 14:36
  • You could always do a Twitter search and save it for later.
    – ale
    Oct 8, 2010 at 14:41
  • I just did a quick Google search for "traffic alerts to twitter". There are hundreds of Twitter accounts out there for just this purpose. Try searching for your metropolitan area.
    – ale
    Oct 8, 2010 at 14:50
  • @AIE I was hoping for something more like "automatically getting suddenly populated local trend", and not limiting to traffic. And don't forget notifications!
    – cregox
    Oct 8, 2010 at 15:00
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While far from perfect, I've being using ifttt.com

I can set up a Twitter search key and get notified on my e-mail. So, a nicely set string can actually predict some things.

Not there yet, getting closer... But close enough for now!

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