Thursday, March 19, 2009

Things They Should Invent: serious/urgent only breaking news feeds

Some news media have RSS or Twitter feeds that give you breaking headlines as they happen.

The problem is the vast majority of headlines you don't need your day interrupted for. I want a feed only of things a person might plausibly need their day interrupted for, things that might be actionable, things that might not wait until you get home. Things where you have to reschedule or check that your loved ones are okay. Things like "OMG, giant propane explosion in North York!" or "The whole subway is closed and your commute is going to be seriously fucked up" or "Giant earthquake somewhere with tens of thousands dead." This feed shouldn't be constant, there shouldn't necessarily even be a post every day. Just as needed and when urgent and requiring action.

I don't twitter, but I would totally join and sign up for text messages if I could get only the truly important things.

The TTC has a thingy where you can get text messages when there is a subway delay. They don't send them every day, they don't send you reassurances that the subway is fine, they don't send you fluffy little fun facts on days when the subway is running smoothly and there's nothing to tell. They just inform you when there's a problem and leave you alone otherwise. I want the equivalent for news feeds. Existing news feeds, even "breaking news" feeds, are like receiving an hourly text message telling you the subway is running smoothly.

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