Auto-generated text messages on your cell phone and auto-generated e-mail messages to alert you to specific events (notices of school closings because of snow, notices of overdue cell phone bills, or, in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, notices of emergency situations on campus) have become increasingly popular as a means of keeping up with events that may affect us in one way or another. A service in New York, Clever Commute, has taken things a step further by providing nearly live updates to commuters of traffic snarls, train delays, road closings, and other commuter headaches. The service differs from auto-generated messages that already provided by the transit authority in that it allows commuters, using their Blackberrys, to communicate with each other through the service in a "broadcast" method like an e-mail listserv, so commuters can update each other on delays, which enables the service to be more up-to-the-minute than official notices sent out by the transit authority.
In the New York Times article describing the service, an example of the value of the interactive nature of the service was provided by the following anecdote:
On Tuesday, one rider wrote that a Mini Cooper parked at the Bay Street station had its lights on. Barry Polen, who gets on at the station, saw the note and realized it was his car.
Already in his office in the Flatiron district, Mr. Polen called his wife, who drove to the station and turned the lights off.
“Otherwise, I would have gotten back to a car with a dead battery,” said Mr. Polen, one of the first people to sign up for the service. “When it boils down to it, it’s commuters and technology helping other commuters.”
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Link - New York Times
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