twitterbird

Placer Bus Group (PBG) is now using twitter as a means for contacting riders and their parents in the event there is a problem with the bus. Jeff, our driver, has the ability to send short messages from the bus to notify all who have signed up for this service.

Signup:

To register for this free* service, send a text (SMS) message to 40404 with Follow PBGinfo . You will receive a message from twitter to reply with your name. After you reply, you should receive future PBG updates. * text message charges may apply depending upon your wireless carrier and texting plan.

Bus Status Check:

If you wish to check on the bus' status at any time, you can send a text to 40404 and type Get PBGinfo or go to PlacerBusGroup.com home page. You should get the latest update (which may be days or weeks old). We do not expect to send out twitter notifications unless there is a problem. Hopefully we won't need to use this service very often!

Reliability:

"twitter" does not work flawlessly. Because of it's wild success, there have been issues with over capacity and other problems that are frequently mentioned in the media. Other issues could prevent you from receiving messages in a timely manner: Your cell phone could be out of range, your wireless company or phone goes offline.... Again, you can always request the latest update using Get PBGinfo command as mentioned above or by checking our website home page.

Stop updates:

If you wish to no longer get these bus updates, sent a text to 40404 and type Stop PBGinfo

Updates During School Hours:

Update messages will be sent as soon as a problem becomes known so that people can make necessary arrangements as early as possible, including during the school day. Students should silence their cell phones or turn them off to avoid violating the school's cell phone policies during the school day.

Email updates:

You can get PBG updates at your desk computer at work or home via RSS feeds. Many email programs integrate these RSS feeds. Microsoft Office Outlook and Thunderbird are only two of the many email clients which do this. Our feed is: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/58893722.rss

Troubleshooting twitter:

Check twitter help. If you have never gotten a text response from twitter after sending a request, check to see that short text codes are enabled on your phone. You can easily check this by sending a text to Google 466453. If you get an immediate response back, this is not your issue. If you don't get a response from Google, you can contact your wireless provider to enable "short text codes".  You can also read this information from twitter about Missing updates on your phone.

If automatic updates stop coming, please see this twitter help page and resend a text message to 40404 with Follow PBGinfo. This might be good to do every now and then, it can't hurt.

If you can't get your cell phone to work with twitter, you can always get the latest updates on our home page or our twitter page. We are sorry but Placer Bus Group does not offer twitter troubleshooting. If you are interested in providing technical support services for our riders and parents, please contact us. You may wish to contact some other rider to call you for last minute schedule changes if any of these methods don't work for you.

We hope you find twitter updates useful.