Great Western Coffee Shop

Sideshoots - associated subjects => News, Help and Assistance => Topic started by: grahame on January 06, 2021, 10:30:57



Title: Immediate headlines / breaking travel and transport news
Post by: grahame on January 06, 2021, 10:30:57
The "Rail News" link (https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/UK/Travel+&+Transport/Rail) in the text links within the main banner on each page takes you to a news feed from NewsNow which gives many dozen new stories from all over the UK through the day.  A useful read if you have the time ... but few of us do routinely and regularly.

For a while, the forum has flagged up
Stay at home or local if you can!
within the top banner.  A message we are now very familiar with, and is duplicated in bold red text with
Current travel advice 5.1.2021

From time to time, you'll now find the "Stay at home or local" message replaced by links to current travel and transport stories from the BBC - automated, highlighting just one or two recent stories.  I am working to tune what's there and while I do so you may find some surprising stories coming up ... looking to have stories there for just 12 hours after they are published by the BBC. That could be tuned - I wonder if 24 hours would be good for members who visit daily?


Title: Re: Immediate headlines / breaking travel and transport news
Post by: grahame on January 14, 2021, 15:11:32
Experimental links have been in place for a few days ... looking at the BBC UK and BBC Business feeds.  Stories that are up to 16 hours old will appear (and with a highlighting asterisk if they're within an hour and a half) if the subject or description includes words starting:
train
station
express
fare
rail
bus
road
aircraft
airport
travel
commuter
passenger
taxi

However if those words appear with the following they will be discarded:
trainer
training
stationery
polling station
travelled
power station

Finally, I have down-scored anything in the sports section of the BBC.

Feedback / thoughts on what's appropriate (or not) most welcome - it will never be 100% perfect but with a bit of tuning it should be able to pick up most stories.   All stories on the BBC feed we take can be seen at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/bbcnews.html - with those stories that make it past our filter at the top, then those that we don't think are transport related below.


Title: Re: Immediate headlines / breaking travel and transport news
Post by: paul7575 on November 11, 2021, 14:54:37
BBC news feed seems to have mixed up military history with transport/travel today?

An excavated Spitfire wreck and a mysteriously sunken Aircraft Carrier,  ???

Perhaps it’s to discourage air and sea travel…


Title: Re: Immediate headlines / breaking travel and transport news
Post by: grahame on November 11, 2021, 16:35:04
BBC news feed seems to have mixed up military history with transport/travel today?

An excavated Spitfire wreck and a mysteriously sunken Aircraft Carrier,  ???

Perhaps it’s to discourage air and sea travel…

Our filtering is based on keywords in the title and subtitle and is not as good as a manual job would be - but it's there 24 hours a day!


Title: Re: Immediate headlines / breaking travel and transport news
Post by: grahame on February 15, 2022, 10:19:15
I have changed the banner in "breaking news" on those occasions when there IS no breaking news identified ...
From:
Stay at home or local if you can
To:
Travel Safe. Wear a face mask on the train or bus if you can.

Let's hope we don't have to step bask to the old message again.  It is far too easy for advice to get out of date !!! - and this one was a code change that was down to me.

Should I have gone as far as "Use it or lose it"??



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