Introducing TwitCal

A few weeks ago, myself and James were out at lunch after a morning of web app brainstorming. We'd hit a brick wall on our idea and started thinking that maybe we were trying to be a little too ambitious.

Why not start with something simpler we thought? Maybe work off the back of an already available API? And that lunchtime Twitcal was born.

"Great!" I hear you shout, "What's TwitCal?". Well, I'm glad you asked. It's a very simple offering. TwitCal allows you to post entries to a calendar via a Twitter account. When you post a tweet, include the desired date in one of the supported formats, write your calendar entry and hit 'update'. Done. Then just visit Twitcal.com to view your calendar, or anyone's for that matter.

So that's what it is, how did it come into being?

Well, I don't tend to use a calendar, I know I should (my wife would love it if I did), but it's another piece of software I don't have the attention span or inclination to manage and organise. But something I 'do' tend to do is Twitter a lot. Probably too much in fact. If only I could bring the two things together, surely my life would be complete?

Our first port of call was a little research to check a similar service didn't already exist, and after some Googling it seemed we were in luck. Even luckier in my opinion was that our preferred URL 'twitcal.com' wasn't already snapped up (not bad in this day and age). It was at this point that I sensed world domination just around the corner (I can get a little over excited about available domain names) but on a serious note, getting the right name means a lot. If someone else wanted to replicate our idea I really think we'd have the strongest identity and therefore the upper hand.

James then began delving into the world of Twitter API's. I'll let him tell you more about that side of things in another post, but it became quickly apparent that our idea was pretty easy to implement. I knocked up a simple site and logo design and three weeks on we're sat here with the finished article. There really isn't much to explain that happened in between, it seemed to sail along smoothly. Probably the toughest part was tackling the 'Terms of service' and getting the ad spaces filled and even these weren't too taxing.

Next up is planning for phase 2 additions and amendments to the service. We already have thoughts on including event reminders and also plans to break each date down into hours for more detailed organising, but for now we're just happy to get it up and out there and gauge people's reactions.

Overall it's been a really interesting few weeks and we're looking forward to spreading the word on TwitCal. Check out the site www.twitcal.com for more info and drop us a line if you have any questions or feedback at hello@brightsparkdigital.com. You can also find me on Twitter under the username @brightspark_mc.