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?

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

I think it is a good idea to incorporate people’s tweets about the event as it happens, so I have set up a Cover it Live event which will import relevant tweets.

For those interested the hashtag is #scotweb2. If I get the chance, I will also update the @Scotweb2 Twitter account from time to time. The CiL panel will also import any tweets from our personal accounts, @doctorvee and @alexstobart.

I hope you find the event useful and enjoyable.

To view the Cover it Live panel in a pop-up window, click here.

It looks like they are doing a lot of interesting things on the internet. I particularly like Capital Collections, a wonderful treasure trove of images from Edinburgh’s libraries. There is also an associated Flickr stream.

For more information, see this post by Phil Bradley, which points out that there is also a Delicious account, a wiki and a YouTube channel!

(Via Currybet.)

The Edinburgh event will take place at Hawke and Hunter, 12 Picardy Place, Edinburgh. Tickets are £7 and all proceeds will go to charity: water. It promises to be a great opportunity to put faces to avatars, with the promise of live music and a raffle and auction with some rather tempting prizes. I will be there. Be quick if you want a ticket though — they seem to be selling quickly. You can buy your tickets here.

For more information, check out the Edinburgh Twestival webpage. You can also follow EdTwestival on Twitter and keep up with the event page on Facebook.

Already as part of the celebrations surrounding the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, snippets of his poetry have been posted on Twitter under the account ayrshirebard. Now the account will be the home of a drive to raise funds to build the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.

NTS is looking to raise £4 million over the weekend. The fundraising drive coincides with the 25th of January, beginning when the first part of the globe celebrates the birth of Burns at noon today and ending on Monday evening.

This looks like it is very much an experiment for the time being. Although Twitter has been used as a fundraising tool in the USA, but NTS reckon this is the first time it’s been done in the UK. It will be very interesting to see how successful it is.

There is more information at Craig McGill’s website and you can follow Robert Burns and the fundraising efforts on the Twitter account ayrshirebard.