I recently found out that National Rail Enquiries has a number of Twitter accounts which can update travellers on service disruptions. There is a main @nationalrailenq feed which updates on issues throughout Britain’s rail network.

That may be too noisy though. So they have also set up separate Twitter accounts for each franchise. So for Scots, the most important one to follow would be @NRE_ScotRail for ScotRail, followed by perhaps @NRE_XC for Cross Country and @NRE_NXEastCoast for National Express East Coast.

It’s certainly an interesting way of letting people know about service disruptions while on the move. But even these franchise-specific Twitter streams are rather noisy compared with the fine SMS alerts service which ScotRail have been offering for years. The SMS service automatically alerts you to disruptions that affect your journey only. You can choose a route and which times and days concern you. This service is already totally free, so it’s difficult to see what advantage the Twitter feeds bring to commuters.

Nonetheless, it is yet another service to add to the seemingly neverending list of things that Twitter can be useful for. Who could have thought that when they first logged in to Twitter years ago and was asked the question, “What are you doing?”

National Rail Enquiries does have a bit of bridge-building to do. Earlier this year, they forced the makers of the popular iPhone application MyRailLite to stop their service. This was seemingly because National Rail Enquiries saw a money-making opportunity. While MyRailLite was free, the new official application costs £4.99 to do much the same thing.

However, I must say that as a user of the official National Rail Enquiries iPhone app, I am very happy with what it can do, though I don’t know how it compares to MyRailLite.

I also note that National Rail Enquiries are inviting us to “become a fan” of them on Facebook. Hands up, any takers?

Inspired by a similar tool on LocalGovCamp, Alex has asked me to create this database of those involved in Scotweb2. If you have participated in Scotweb2, please feel free to enter your details below so that we can follow each other an form a Scotweb2 Twitter community.

This will have a more permanent location in the Tools section.

For those new to the subject, here are two good reads that explain where twitter and add-ons are used ; the second one is a guide

From a local authority, and with many thanks

And from one of the best on-line schools

So if you are asked why to use it, this may help the business case

Can anyone in government access this tool ?

Scottish Road Works On-line Google Maps mashup

Scottish Road Works On-line allows you to zoom in to a particular location to see what disruption is in your area’s roads. Alternatively, you can search by postcode or by date. Furthermore, roadworks are ranked as high, medium or low impact.

This has been set up by The Scottish Road Works Commissioner, and is a great example of how web 2.0 tools can be used to make information easily accessible. Full marks.

Hat tip to Richard McKay who posted about this on Twitter.

Some clever person has come up with a character profile of writing styles on blogs

Whether you write one, or read one, try the analysis here

http://www.typealyzer.com/index.php?lang=en

I have built a custom search engine which will allow you to search Scottish government websites.

I built it using Google Custom Search Engine, which is a pretty nifty tool that lets you create a search engine that produces results from a selected set of websites. Dave Briggs suggested this following the success of LGSearch, which searches government websites in the UK.

At the moment Scotweb2 Search includes the websites of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Scotland Office and the 32 local councils in Scotland. In time, I plan to extend it so that it includes other Scottish public sector organisations. If you have any suggestions for the sort of websites that should be included, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or send us an email.

Scotweb2 Search