Thinking of an Amtrak site

[profwebs]

Just want some opinions from all of you guys and gals here.

I'm thinking of building a site or blog that aggregates all news related to Amtrak. I got the idea because I "track" the word Amtrak on 2 social networking sites I use for business, so I get updated anytime someone says something about Amtrak. This in turn alerted me to this article http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/517249.html. That's what gave me the idea anyway.

May also use the site for other Amtrak related topics in the future too. Already grabbed the domain in case. AmtrakNews.com

 

[Hanno]

I was using Google Alert to let me know of any Amtrak news and found it to be somewhat overwhelming. Too much news about the same type of thing from many perspectives. If a train hits a car and it is picked up by AP then 20 newspapers carry the article and you read the same report over and over again.

I like the idea of collecting news and if there were a way to filter it somewhat it would be a good thing, IMHO!

 

[the_traveler]

What you want to do seems very similar to what On Track On Line does.

 

[amtrakwolverine]

Just want some opinions from all of you guys and gals here.
I'm thinking of building a site or blog that aggregates all news related to Amtrak. I got the idea because I "track" the word Amtrak on 2 social networking sites I use for business, so I get updated anytime someone says something about Amtrak. This in turn alerted me to this article http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/517249.html. That's what gave me the idea anyway.

May also use the site for other Amtrak related topics in the future too. Already grabbed the domain in case. AmtrakNews.com

and i bet the faimly of the man killed in the article will sue amtrak saying you saw the man trying to get off the bridge you should have stopped. and sue the owner of the bridge saying you didn't have anything to prevent people from going across the bridge.

 

[Amtrak Watcher]

What would the proposed site offer that on-track-on-line or a casual browser search does not offer? It seems that you would have to add some value of your own to make the site "visitable".

 

[profwebs]

What would the proposed site offer that on-track-on-line or a casual browser search does not offer? It seems that you would have to add some value of your own to make the site "visitable".

Well, the best thing would be the ability to subscribe, either in RSS format or by email, making it easy to keep updated on all things Amtrak. Thats about as far as I have gotten with "thinking" so far. That's why I asked here about everyone's opinons

I like the idea of collecting news and if there were a way to filter it somewhat it would be a good thing, IMHO!

Yeah, I would definitely have to come up with some sort of filter, at least to only display the 1st full article, then add links at the bottom for the other articles, like Google does with its news results.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I like the idea of collecting news and if there were a way to filter it somewhat it would be a good thing, IMHO!

Yeah, I would definitely have to come up with some sort of filter, at least to only display the 1st full article, then add links at the bottom for the other articles, like Google does with its news results.

Is there a way to get an RSS feed from google of every article news.google.com finds that matches the keyword ``amtrak''?

 

[Amtrak Watcher]

There is a blizzard of web sites out there having to do with rail travel all over the world, e.g. http://www.travellerspoint.com/forum.cfm?thread=47701

It's probably lots of work, but a site that organizes all of these may be attractive.

 

[profwebs]

I like the idea of collecting news and if there were a way to filter it somewhat it would be a good thing, IMHO!

Yeah, I would definitely have to come up with some sort of filter, at least to only display the 1st full article, then add links at the bottom for the other articles, like Google does with its news results.

Is there a way to get an RSS feed from google of every article news.google.com finds that matches the keyword ``amtrak''?

Short answer is yes. Right now, unless I find a prebuilt script, I'll have to learn quite a bit more PHP than I know right now..

I'd also ad a section to the site of what people are discussing (Amtrak wise) on Twitter.

A little off topic, If Amtrak was wise, they would have a PR rep on Twitter to help negate the bad experiences people have. But surprizingly, most that I see are positive posts, praising Amtrak.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I like the idea of collecting news and if there were a way to filter it somewhat it would be a good thing, IMHO!

Yeah, I would definitely have to come up with some sort of filter, at least to only display the 1st full article, then add links at the bottom for the other articles, like Google does with its news results.

Is there a way to get an RSS feed from google of every article news.google.com finds that matches the keyword ``amtrak''?

Short answer is yes. Right now, unless I find a prebuilt script, I'll have to learn quite a bit more PHP than I know right now..

This seems to think you can just do your news.google.com search manually, and then click on something on the search results page to built an RSS feed.