CTA interested in working with our wireless alerts
CTA staff expressed interest in working with CTA Tattler and our wireless alerts to see if we can help them as a pilot project for their own email alerts systems coming early next year.
My presentation and handouts (download below) to the CTA board Thursday was well-received. (Special thanks to my 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore for going with me and expressing support for this test project.)
I suggested that the CTA should join our Alerts network as another user, but one whose posts certainly should be the most informative and useful.
"This pilot project would give the CTA the opportunity to devise and test protocols and procedures for doing your own alerts when that time comes, while simultaneously developing the back-end infrastructure," I told the board. "It’s a win-win for the CTA and its riders."
The Tribune quoted CTA Chairman Carole Brown: "I was impressed by the CTA Tattler, and anyone that can help us get information to our riders, I think that's a good thing," Brown said. "But we are working on it and working on it in a way that all our 1.5 million riders can access that information efficiently."
Certainly we understand that our alert project was not meant to handle the capacity of 1.5 million riders. But at this smaller scale we figure we can help the CTA test their project before they roll out their network. We look forward to working with the CTA on this.
Download CTA_Board_wire_alerts.doc
Also, the Tribune got some details wrong in its story today about the email alerts. Corrections below.
Charles Sheehan of the Trib wrote:
"New technology can help fill the gap, however, as one transit user has proven with a private text-message service he created that allows users to inform one another about delays. Daniel X. O'Neil, an Internet consultant, launched www.ctatattler.com, which he said now serves about 400 people."
Wrong brother. It was me, Kevin O'Neil who launched ctatattler.com. Dan came up with the idea for the wireless alerts community, which we jointly launched on this blog.
And:
"CTA officials said they appreciate the work done by O'Neil, who testified before the board Thursday, but it would be more complicated to install similar technology systemwide."
It was Kevin O'Neil, not Dan, who testified before the board.
Email alerts? I thought you were gonna do this via SMS?
Posted by: matt | August 19, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Sorry for any confusion on SMS vs. email alerts.
The Trib's story was about the CTA budget and the CTA contract to let people sign up for email alerts. Those email alerts from the CTA could go to your phone if yours is set up to receive email. From what I can tell thus far, the CTA's own system will not be SMS alerts. But I don't know enough about it to say that with certainty.
The CTA wireless alerts that we offer through this blog are indeed SMS alerts to any PDA, phone, email or other wireless device. The CTA staff said they wanted to work with us to help test their future project. We'll see how that pans out. We haven't discussed yet how the CTA will participate in our own rider-to-rider wireless alerts.
Posted by: Kevin | August 19, 2005 at 11:14 AM
I'll say this much: setting up a phone to receive email alerts has been far more difficult than setting it up to receive SMS.
Posted by: matt | August 19, 2005 at 11:23 AM
For those not aware, you can still easily get email alerts through your cell phone as if it were an SMS message.
Most cell phone providers should give you a SMS email address. When a message is sent to that address, it goes directly to your phone like a normal SMS message.
When the CTA's email alerts system goes online, just signup using your cell phone's SMS email address to get the alerts wirelessly.
Posted by: Kevin Z | August 19, 2005 at 11:43 AM
Kevin Z: I figured it should be that simple in the future to participate in the CTA's email alert system. We'll see for sure when details are announced.
Posted by: Kevin | August 19, 2005 at 12:03 PM
Damn reporters. Don't they ever get anything right?!
Posted by: Kevin O'Reilly | August 19, 2005 at 03:59 PM