RedFunnel Shows Live RedJet Crossings On Site: The Background

You know that we’ve been keen on Twitter for a while – we think it’s a whole new communication channel (Read up on Twitter) – well it looks like Red Funnel feel the same too.

RedFunnel Shows Live RedJet Crossings On Site: The BackgroundThey’ve now got live information about the arrivals and departures of the RedJets on their website.

The mystery of how this has come about is detailed below.

How does it work?
The Island’s very own IBM tech-tastic super geek, Andy Stanford Clark, has worked some technical magic and built some Twitter streams to live report the comings and goings of ferries to and from the Island.

One of these, @RedJets, which not surprisingly monitors the Cowes – Southampton route as follows

12:18 – Red Jet 3 is leaving Southampton
18 minutes ago from web
12:09 – Red Jet 3 has arrived at Southampton
25 minutes ago from web
12:10 – Red Jet 1 has arrived at West Cowes
25 minutes ago from web

His reason? Simple. When he was using the RedJet, he wanted to know if he was going to be able to catch it. A clear illustration of necessity being the mother of invention.

Well done to Andy, because every ferry user can now benefit too. It’s great when people give isn’t it?

Andy, who controls the output of the @RedJets Twitter stream, has also April Fool pranked the stream.

Red Funnel April Fool