Data gathering and automatic twitter posting for Heathrow arrivals and departures.
twitter.com/heathrowtower
Heathrow Tower was born of a conversation with one of our frequent collaborators, Jenny Brown, about the use of twitter for making inanimate objects talk, exposing hidden data and providing rhythm to the computer worker's day. Jenny pointed out to me that all Heathrow airport arrivals and departures data is online, and from there it was a small step to start pulling in the data, storing it in a database, and sharing a little of it on twitter.
Behind the scenes are a couple of simple ruby scripts (you can see them here) which have gradually grown to gather a lot of associated data about airports, distances, and the like.
For now, the result is a rather pleasing hourly summary, that adds a little rhythm and background awareness into my day. You can follow it at http://twitter.com/heathrowtower. One day, perhaps, it will grow into a bigger project exposing more of the data about how we use Heathrow, where we travel to, and what that means. But for now we're staying busy with client work and just enjoying the hourly rhythm of our little bot's tweets.