The Natural Language of Green Beer

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I love our nlp so much I think everyone should use it. And they can! That’s why we have an api.

There are some other calendars out there with quick entry boxes. Some even claim to accept “natural language.” But there is nothing “natural” about being confined to a rigid grammar. I would never say, “10pm today come to my place for the night of your life.” It just doesn’t roll off the tongue. Especially not after a few green beers.

These other services out there should leverage our nlp. Below is an example of using our nlp. It results in an iCalendar file which means that any other service can include the data. Since it’s St. Patrick’s day you’re going to need a bloody mary tomorrow morning. In fact, you probably need one every saturday morning. The below link gets you the iCalendar with a display reminder set. You can see the embedded text:
remind me to drink a bloody mary every saturday morning
(you can borrow my api key for now)

and if you would like to add this event to your calendar for just tomorrow:

There are many more posibilities so give it a try. But first go drink some green beers.

p.s. Anthony told me he has made some big speed improvements in the sponge.

New Features!

Anthony, Blythe and Chris have been working overtime to bring you some new features.

API – Read, write and Sponge using the Spongecell API. We’ve exposed the Spongecell engine via the API – just send us a text string and get back an iCalendar file.

Private RSS/iCalendar feeds – RSS feeds and iCalendar subscriptions can contain private events. Simply create a key in the Publish/RSS screen. Feeds and subscriptions to your friends calendar will also contain events marked as friends-only.

Demo Accounts (this link will launch a demo account) – Now trying Spongecell is as easy as using it.

First Day – Choose from Sunday, Monday, yesterday or today to start your week.

Reminders and Recurrence in Spongecell engine – “remind me via sms to walk dog every day at 8am until november 1″ and similar variants will work. Have you added sponge@spongecell.com to your phone’s address book yet?

Digg this post.

Spongecell NLP review

Spongecell’s Natural Language Processing engine got a great review today. This type of test highlights the benefit of powering a quick entry bar with NLP rather than using a syntax parser. Also, consider that syntax works sufficiently when you are in front of a web app (with help or syntax tips), but it breaks down in other applications, especially mobile.

Digg the review by clicking here.