7 Shiny New Twitter Apps From Rails Rumble
By TwitterFools Editorial Staff, August 31st, 2009 in News, Reviews, Sites, Tools | Comments
Rails Rumble is a programming competition where teams of up to four developers get 48 hours to produce an innovative internet application using Ruby on Rails. Among the many applications developed in this year’s competition that began 8/22 and ended 8/23 was a large selection of interesting new Twitter apps. Some are slick and sophisticated and some are definitely in need of further development, but all of them are shiny and new. There is nothing like a little competition to get the creative juices flowing and this year’s field showed some mad skills. So, now that the judging and public voting is over we’d like to share some of our favorites with you.
I don’t know about you but sometimes I do my best and most creative work under the gun. I am not sure if that is the case for all the Rails Rumble Teams it is clear to say that their creativity came from somewhere. Here are some of our favorites from this year’s competition.
Hi I’m isn’t strictly a Twitter app, but it did win the Rails Rumble competition, so it is well worth mentioning. Think of it as your name tag on the internet. It is a service that brings your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts together with your Flickr pics, YouTube channel and blog all in one convenient place. Now your friends and followers can visit just one location to get the latest updates on you…as long as you sign up and share your page at http://hi.im/yourname Congrats to the Hi I’m team for their impressive entry and win!
peepnote helps you track the people you follow on Twitter by creating a handy central filing place for all your peep notes. Sign in with Twitter, import your following list. Now you can move through and organize those you follow by tags. You can also create notes to help you remember why you followed or unfollowed each person. For folks who are following thousands of people this could get tedious – but we think it is an interesting idea.
Think of hearton as the equivalent to your middle or high school romance gossip group. First, you follow @bighearton and they’ll follow you right back. Then send a direct message to bighearton with the @ username of the person who owns your affection. They will get a message and if they return to the site and list you as a crush then your everlasting love is revealed to everyone via Twitter. Is love grand or what? Of course it is and there are many out there that will just love this app.
Now here’s an app that we think has real legs. Twixperts is a place to get answers to your questions. At present the categories of questions that can be answered are somewhat limited but we expect people will be lining up to help in the near future. Here’s what you do: Visit the site, sign in with Twitter, select a topic category, and ask your question. Immediately your question is routed via Twitter to the experts in that category and you’ll receive a direct message when an answer is returned. We tried it out a few times and got pretty swift and helpful answers. Give it a try.
Pockets is an new app that allows you to send voicemail messages to your friends and notify them via twitter. Very simply you visit the Pockets site and set up your account. Then type in the recipients @ username and Pockets will call you. You leave a voice message and the recipient is notified by an @ message that your message has been sent. All they have to do is return to the Pockets site to retrieve it. Interesting yes, useful??? We’ll see if this one catches on.
a.pend.to helps turn your Twitter microblog into a macroblog by creating blog posts and pages where your tweeted photos, videos, audio files, questions and page links are posted in their full glory. Being a blog means other users can read, comment and engage you about your stuff. You sign in with Twitter and when you want something micro to go macro you tweet it to @ppend. It is that easy! Not only is it a very interesting offering, the team that put it together included an fun description of the creative competition process in the footer of each page that reads “Forged in steel, tempered with fire, stolen from the lap of the Gods themselves, broken, then stapled back together in 48 hours.” Should we tell them that ‘Gods’ have multiple ‘laps?’ Nah, I am sure they will figure that one out.
twitabrew is appealing on a whole new level. Lovers of microbrews are bound to drink this one right up. It takes what is already a social experience – that of exploring new brews with your buds, and launches it to a global level. The app is design to help those of you who taste-test many different brews to remember the ones you like best. So, you are out on the town and you find a tasty new brew. Tweet out its name with a rating , a brief comment, and make sure to include the hashtag #twitabrew. You can also submit a rating from the site itself. While there you can review your past submissions – jogging your brew influenced memory but since the site is a central repository for everyone’s favorite or not so favorite brews you’ll soon be discovering new brews you’ve never even heard of, or rediscovering past loves. Now all we are wondering is who is going to organize the first twitabrew tweetup?
Now, that’s just seven of the many Twitter apps that were developed in the 48-hour Rails competition. Altogether 237 teams competed with 137 of them successfully producing apps using Ruby on Rails. Not all the apps developed were Twitter-centric. A good number of the apps have great potential and some may not make it far at all. For sure, they’ll all be fine tuned now that the competition is over. If you want to see others shiny new Twitter apps a search for Twitter on this page will return a 3 page list of Twitter apps developed. We applaud them all for their innovative work which helps us all experience new ways to enjoy and leverage Twitter.
So, if you could conceive of a killer Twitter app what would your app do? We’d love to hear your thoughts on that subject. Be well and Tweet well!
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