SMS and IM Actions to your Inbox with Twitter and Vitalist
January 29th, 2008 / 25 Comments
Twitter is a pretty cool short message communications service that has become very popular lately. It works really well across instant messaging services and mobile SMS gateways. We would like to announce that we have just finished an interface that allows you to send actions directly to your Vitalist inbox through Twitter.
- To get set up:
Sign-up at vitalist-tools/twitter.- You can now access the Twitter->Vitalist setup page directly from your Vitalist Settings/Services. Click ‘API on’ then Save. You should then see an ‘Add Twitter->Vitalist’ link.
- Enter you Twitter user name and Vitalist API key (found in Settings->Services) to link the accounts.
- Log into Twitter to search for the user: vitalist. Once you have found it, set your account to “follow” vitalist.
At this point, you should be ready to start sending tweets as actions to your Vitalist inbox. Send them as direct messages in the form:
‘d vitalist action’ (Example: d vitalist Pick up dry cleaning)
Your action should then appear in your Vitalist inbox in the next few minutes. If you run into any problems, please let us know at support@vitalist.com.
Posted by Robert
nice. any plans to modify vitalist to support sending notifications through twitter (like you do already with email/sms)?
Nice! It would be really great if you could also directly put items in a project through the text message as well.
Very nice! Is it possible to put due date for the action via Twitter?
terrific idea, but twitter so unreliable, i hesitate to trust this. only about 50-60% of IMs i tweet actually hit my inbox. the sms rate so far is even worse - and those cost me €0.20 a pop!
the point of GTD is to be able to rest easy that stuff in your head is safely in a trusted system - so far my experience with twitter hasn’t much impressed me. first time i actually used it here.
i have read that Jaiku and Pownce are a lot more stable. any chance of extending this concept to those platforms as time permits?
please keep up the momentum improving this already highly useful service! i’m showing this to all my other ICT colleagues, they are very impressed and instantly recognize the value this adds to the GTD mindset.
cheers,
John
I just tried to setup a Vitalist-Twitter link and Twitr could not find user vitalist. I am in the UK - would that make a differnce?
@neil - shouldn’t matter where you are. tra at this url: http://twitter.com/vitalist
[...] I have been using Twitter to send tasks to my Vitalist inbox for a few days. I got an email asking me to test out Vitalist Tools, which currently only has Twitter. Today, I saw that Vitalist has announced it on their blog. The setup is easy. Simply add your Twitter user name and your Vitalist API key. The only thing I did wrong was that I did not activate my Vitalist API key. Make sure to turn yours on before you link your Vitalist to Twitter. [...]
This is a great addition. I’m constantly SMS-ing myself tasks which I must remember to add to VL. Nice work!
I’m not a Twitter fan, but like everyone else with a computer, I use an instant messaging program. I’d love to be able to IM actions to my Vitalist account. Can your genies in the server room make my wish come true?
Hasn’t worked for me yet and I have followed all the instructions above.
Sorry, my mistake. Works like a charm and really appreciate the convenience.
It keeps telling me there is a problem with my Twitter name. But I know I have the right name. Am I supposed to enter it with the full Twitter address or something? Is this a Twitter error? Anyone else having this issue? Anyone? Bueller?
Brad
Please email your Twitter screen name and Vitalist API key to support@vitalist.com and we will get you set up correctly.
How can I change the email on my account? Is it permanent? Am I just asking (another) dumb question? I’ve looked in the knowledge base… really!!
What about synching with Jott? Better than Twitter in that you can send messages with your voice; already Jott links in with Google Calendar so I can set up appointments with a voice message. Would be great to set up actions as well, even if they all get dumped in my Inbox. At least I could capture them in the moment.
Crap, sorry just now realized that you already have a link into Jott. Pardon me.
good idea, but twitter is too flakely. http://identi.ca/ and +1 for pownce
I’m using the SMS functionality, but I don’t see any “IM” box at http://twitter.com/devices
Do I have to do something specific to enable this?
R.
Unfortunately, twitter is having scaling issues due to their popularity and have turned off IM functionality for most users.
So is the Twitter function working anymore or not? I would like to know before going through the install. Thanks!
It would be awesome if we could already put twitters into a folder. Example a lot of stuff I use twitter to vitalist is stuff I want to reference to look up later. It would be nice to automatically put them in the reference folder. The other thing I do is of course actions. It would be nice to put them straight to the action folder
ya really cool
yah i have got lots of support
very nice. now i can add tasks while I facebook, Tweet,on the iPhone, or no My Blackberry. All you need to figure out now is how to get a task directly out my brain while is still a pulse
Nice job. can’t wait for the upgrades!
Does this still work? I used to use it all the time but I’m not having any luck lately…