One-shining-moment alert: Two news developers built a Twitter bot to tell you when the game is getting good

LINK: twitter.com ➚ | Posted by: Caroline O'Donovan | March 21, 2014

Yes, the Vikings should have gone for it on 4th down, and a New York Times robot knows why

December 6, 2013

Found yourself sitting at your desk this week, furtively checking the score to see if anything exciting is happening? Toggle no more: Two members of the WNYC Data News Team have a bot for that.

The New York Times has shown with their currently-on-hiatus 4th Down Bot that sports and automated reporting on social media go hand in hand. With March Madness in full swing, the time is ripe for another stab at the sports bot.

.@thepapaya and I just made @NailbiterBot, which tweets an alert if an NCAA tournament game gets close with under three minutes to play.

— Noah Veltman (@veltman) March 20, 2014

Veltman is a former Knight-Mozilla OpenNews fellow who recently joined Jenny Ye at WNYC.

The toy was an instant hit, and suggests there’s room for a lot more innovating in the sports bot space.

@jeremybowers @jennschiffer @thepapaya Might try to do it for MLB this season too!

— Noah Veltman (@veltman) March 21, 2014

Veltman says he was “initially was scraping the scoreboard directly,” but realized he could get more accurate, timely data from “the JSONP file that powers the scoreboard on NCAA.com.” The developers in the audience should look for a Source post explaining the nitty-gritty next week.

And, in other news:

Let's #GoCrimson! @hoopsatharvard moves past 5th-seeded Cincinnati, 61-57 http://t.co/4BBuQuaTzt #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/FXJE7WgD48

— Harvard University (@Harvard) March 21, 2014

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