Balachandar

Configuring Twitter with SMS in India

// June 23rd, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Tools & Web Apps, twitter

It was a Twitter rain yesterday. We were playing Wii tennis at my home and krishashok started tweeting the live commentary and its almost like raining. It was fun. I cant think of a day without Twitter. Thats doesn’t mean i Tweet every min in the public timeline. It’s the number of third party services that i access with Twitter, making it an integral part of my day to day cyberlife. Gigaom says the number of mobile users in India is  246+ Million and Counting (as of march 2008). India is a land of few PCs and millions of mobile phones, which means Twitter and Jaiku will go big someday.

My previous post was about using RTM calendar service with twitter. Most of my readers from India wanted to use twitter via sms, but failed. Some mailed me asking about why they cant successfully register with the 6 digit SMS number that twitter provides. It neither works for me. I use to get “This information is not available at the moment.Please try after some time” as the error message. So this post is for those frustrated users who wanted to use twitter via sms.

When you complete registering with twitter, go to settings>devices tab and add your mobile number. You’ll be asked to send a confirmation code (like mtjmnd )to the number 55 66 511. Try that, if that does’nt works try sending the same confirmation message to the Twitter’s international number +44 762 4801 423. You’ll get back a confirmation sms in seconds, and from there on you’ll start receiving your twitter updates from 5566511. So make sure you add both the numbers in your phone addressbook. Already registered & mobile configured twitter users who don’t receive sms updates anymore, can ‘delete and startover’ and repeat the above said stuff. This works fine as far as you’re only interested in receiving tweets as SMS.

Now, i cant send an international SMS everytime to tweet from my mobile. It costs me 3 bucks minimum and sometimes its 5. Its defntly not a good deal. And FYI, even if sending an SMS to 5566511 works, it will also cost you 3Rs as its a premium number. So what now? The best deal in my experience is to enable GPRS with your service provider and download some Java MIDP client that your mobile supports. Twitter wiki has a huge list of apps. Even try the simplified twitter’s mobile page m.twitter.com from your mobile browser and start sending tweets from mobile. But still sending tweets via sms is a dream.

Wait. There’s one saviour. That’s Vakow. You can successfully send tweets from your mobile to Vakow’s standard Indian mobile number 99015 54321. Only thing you got to make sure is your message format. Say suppose you want to tweet a message like ‘watching euro2008′, and if you’re planning to use vakow’s number, then add the word twit before your message. So you’ve to send an sms like ‘twit watching euro2008′. Vokow is basically a free sms forwarding service, so to diff a twitter message, they ask you to add twit before the messages and it works like a plum. Go register with Vakow, add your twitter account in Vakow’s settings page and start sending tweets via SMS. I still recommend using the web based interface or desktop apps to start if you’re new to twitter. Once you get comfortable with twitter and message formats, then move on to sending tweets via sms. Happy tweeting!

Simplified Productivity: Twitter + RTM + imified

// October 3rd, 2007 // No Comments » // Tools & Web Apps, twitter

Trust me. This is not simply a post to say that I know things. But this works. I’ve been using this for the last 4 months personally and within a team environment. This combination works great every time. Simple, reliable, and on time.
Everyone use different methods to keep track of to-dos’ and tasks. There are

» people who use a diary and a scribble tasks
» people who use sticky notes
» people who use outlook calendar/ lotus notes calendar
» people who use Google calendar/online to-do list managers

and finally there’s this group of people who use “Twitter + Remember the milk + imified” to make their life simple and better. Well, there’s 100’s of services in the second world of web. What’s so special about this?

Look at my concerns now

» Will I be able to add a task without a computer?
» Well, I’m in a pc. But I’m jus chatting. Something came into my mind all of a sudden. How easy is it for me to add this task to my to-do list manager?
» I want to assign this task to my bro or to my team. How can I do that?
» Well, I have added everything. But what next? Will my to-do list manager alert me back in any other form other than an email?

Twitter + RTM does everything that I mentioned above and a dozen more. The complex thing about creating a to-do list is in analyzing how easy it is for me to create a task. I should be able to do that from my loo, from my gym or from anywhere. Even if I’m in front of the computer I don’t want to open my lotus notes>calendar>new task>fill in details.. nope. That’s really tough. With Twitter and RTM combination, I can create tasks from my mobile with an SMS (no need of GPRS), or from my chat client (gtalk, msn), or from desktop widgets and gadgets (twitterfic, twitterlicious), or directly from the website itself. The list of twitter tools is huge. Explore it yourself.

I can assign a task to my colleague and track it. I get periodic customized alerts and reminders in SMS, Chat Messages and emails. Content Contribution and consumption is much easier. To start with, you need to

1. Register with Twitter
2. Enable your mobile alerts in twitter account notification settings (If you face any problems here, this post might help)
3. Register with Remember the milk (RTM).
4. Add RTM’s twitter buddy to your Twitter Friends list
5. Add twitter@twitter.com or imified@imified.com to your chat client (gtalk)

That’s it. Now life is easier. The following illustration should help. Lets see how easy is it to create a task. The right side green container is a list of tools from which you can tweet. These tools can be in a webpage, a desktop widget, a mobile application or simply a SMS.

Creating a Task for your buddy is the same as above, but some changes in the message that you tweet. You have to address to whom you’re assigning the task to.

Now Reminders. You choose what you want. SMS, Chat messenger or email? I prefer all and it works.