TTC Rider’s Strike 11/09/09

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Motivated by the recent announcement of proposed fare increases, a growing number of TTC users have pledged to abandon the TTC for one day — Friday, November 13, 2009 — in the hopes of stopping the changes. If the strike’s Facebook group is to be believed, it is being organized by Nicole KT Winchester, who wrote:

$17 or .25 might not seem like a lot, but it adds up, and to some people, it will make enough of a difference for them to abandon the TTC altogether – or force them to stretch an over-stretched budget.

Riders have accepted fare hikes in the past with grumbling, but little else. Why now? Because if we don’t say something sometime, we will be resigned to increases forever, until transit is no longer an affordable option.

The commission will meet on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 1pm in Committee Room #1 at City Hall to vote on the proposed fare changes.

What do you think? Will this “strike” have any impact? Why or why not? Will you be participating? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Boo! 11/01/09

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DSCN6874 Yesterday, happy to get into the Halloween spirit, @davidburkholder sent in this great photo of his conductor costume. Thanks for playing along, David!


TTCupdates API: The Beginning 10/20/09

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Fair warning, this one’s for the developers.

I’m happy to announce that TTCupdates now has the beginnings of an API available for your projects and mashups. Check out the API page for the lowdown on the methods currently available. There isn’t much at the moment, but I’ll be working to expand the capabilities available via the API in the coming weeks.

Questions? Concerns? Have a kickass suggestion for something you’d like to see included in the API? Leave a comment on this post or give me a shout.

TTCupdates Statistics 10/11/09

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On this relaxing Sunday morning, I thought I would share some interesting stats about the @ttcupdates and @ttcu_community Twitter accounts.

  • In terms of updates posted, the busiest month for @ttcupdates was January 2008 with 40 updates posted. February 2009 follows close behind with 37 updates. Understandably, the Winter months produce more TTC delays than when things are breezy and warm. For example, June and July 2009 had only 15 and 14 updates respectively.
  • The busiest month for @ttcu_community was also February 2009, with 482 updates provided by members of the community.
  • Most updates come from @ttcupdates on Monday and decrease through the week. On the flip side, @ttcu_community updates tend to appear more on Fridays, building throughout the week.
  • Most updates come from @ttcupdates between 9am and 10am. @ttcu_community tends to see more use on the way home, between 5pm and 6pm.

Have a great weekend!

The State of the Union 09/14/09

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I want to begin this post by apologizing to all of you. Almost a month ago, I promised a blog post detailing the spam issues plaguing TTCupdates and the current state of the project. That post never came. For that, I apologize. After all of the love and support you have shown me over the last 10 months, you deserve better than to be ignored like that. It won’t happen again.

So, what happened?

At this point, I’m still not exactly certain. The spam tweets posted to both @ttcupdates and @ttcu_community were not a result of a hacked account. They made their way in via the API. This means it was an issue on my end, and not the fault of Twitter. I’ve closed a security hole in my scripts and I am hopeful the problem has been solved. For obvious reasons, I won’t be revealing the details publicly.

Why did it take so long?

As some of you may know, I took a position at Espresso in July. My fellow infiltrators have kept me good and busy over the last two-and-a-half months and I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to TTCupdates that I would have liked. For that, I apologize.

So, what’s going to happen in the future?

As those who follow me on Twitter know, I have wrestled with this question a lot over the last few weeks. TTCupdates is fairly self-sustaining, but problems do crop up from time to time. Users who abuse the service need to be blocked (yes, I do have a method for doing that!), I need to make sure the project keeps up with changes to the Twitter API, and I have to deal with questions/comments from the community.

Which I love doing. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this entire debacle, it’s that I clearly need to dedicate more time and effort to TTCupdates. TTCu isn’t going anywhere. And if that begins to change, I promise you guys will be the first to know — both here on the blog, and on Twitter.

Wrapping Up

Phew! I’m happy to announce that, as of today, TTCupdates is back up and running. If you notice any problems or bugs, I’d be happy as a clam if you would let me know on Twitter or through the site. Thank you for all of your support over the last few weeks! You guys rock!