Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Thomas Howe may have lost his bet with Dean Collins over the survival of Ooma (at least that’s the way that this judge sees it), but he won something much bigger today.  Taking first place in the Broadsoft Xtended Voice Mashup contest for his Disaster Dispatcher, he also takes home a $5,000 cash prize.  From Broadsoft’s press release:

Created by Hyannis, Mass.-based Thomas Howe, the Disaster Dispatcher is a voice mashup that integrates Twitter, BroadWorks and RSS feeds to provide a one-window communications tool for emergency operators. By keeping all data in one window, emergency personnel can analyze the collection of information after the emergency to optimize response procedures.

“Disaster Dispatcher is a true mashup that integrates multiple services, a real use case, is Web-based and thus widely accessible,” said John Musser, founder and blogger of Programmable Web, a site that covers mashups, Web 2.0 APIs and the Web as a platform. “Twitter notification and RSS integration are creative applications.”

Well done Thomas! And that five large will no doubt make paying for the steaks from the Ooma bet a little easier to swallow.

A while back I discovered a service called TweetLater.  It lets you schedule and send a twitter message at a later time, when you might not be able to do so.  I use it for reminders, and to send notifications out about the SquawkBox.  I literally cue up two or three tweets for the SquawkBox in the morning, and then have them go out as reminders part way through each morning.  Delayed twitter messages are a great marketing tool. 

Here are three services you can use for this purpose:

TweetLater lets you send out twitter messages on schedule, and also includes the ability to automate reciprocal follows.  If you follow me, TweetLater will automatically make me follow you.

Twittertise has the scheduled twitter capability, plus it incorporates a tracking mechanism on links included in the message.  If I send a message to my followers which says “Click here to join the SquawkBox: http://bit.ly/3P3EeC”, I can later go back and determine how many people clicked through.

Easytweets (coming soon) lets you send time delayed tweets, and manage multiple twitter accounts at once.  

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