Use Twitter As a Reminder Service

If you are a heavy Twitter user who tweets all the time throughout the day you may have thought that you have reached the limit as to what you can do with the service. A new service called Remind Me About may change your opinion on that though, as it enables you to save and send reminders using Twitter. It is at its core an open source php script that you need to run on your web server or hosting account to handle the saving and sending of messages for you.

It has been created by the same developer who created Tweet My PC, a software program that accepts commands from a Twitter account to manage the computer system automatically.

Remind Me About is different as it comes as a service offered by the software developer and also as a version that can be installed on a server to run it more privately. It basically works the following way: The user sends a message to a Twitter account that has been created to handle the reminders. These reminders will be stored in a database on the web server running the scripts. Another php script will be checking the database frequently for reminders that are ready to be send out. If those reminders are found they are send out using the same Twitter account.

The php scripts have not been published yet officially by the developer but are going to be released soon. They do require a web server that supports php, MySQL databases and Cron jobs. Running the script on a web server can make sense for several reasons including Twitter Api limitations but also privacy or security related concerns.

The script will be published by the developer soon. As of now only the reminder service setup by the developer is available. No Twitter information (other than following and being followed by the Twitter user the service is running on) are required to use it though.

Advertisement