Spreading Spongecell

People keep asking in our forums* for better ways to spread the Sponge. Here's a start:

Write a review on Amazon. I'm sure there is some sort of revenue sharing available.

del.icio.us us. gross.

Vote for Spongecell on the web2.0 List. The description of Spongecell as "Email or User Id. Password. Remember Me." is dead on.

Vote for Spongecell on Listable

Review Spongecell on BuzzShout

The best thing you can do is tell your friends, maybe show them how easy it is to add new appointments from your phone.

Also, I bought a couple hundred sponges on ebay, they were supposed to be for the launch party but didn't arrive in time. Email me if you have any bright ideas about what I should do with them – marc at spongecell.com. Maybe we should have another party?

*The forums are currently in an invite-only beta.

The Sponge learns to read Email

Hi, this is Anthony, creator of the Sponge.

We have some very exciting news today… 

As many of our brave users have discovered, the Sponge can actually read and understand more than simple text messages. We build it from the ground up to do so, but have been keeping it a secret until now. When you receive your next "hand typed" Email invitation, forward it along to sponge@spongecell.com. We'll let the Sponge read it, add a new event to your calendar and send you a quick confirmation message. You can also CC Spongecell when you send a new email to a friend. Keep in mind that we're still in the early stages of SpongeMail.

In the future, we expect to build out better ways for you invite friends, quickly correct mistakes and more. Please send us any ideas that you have on how we can improve this feature to contact@spongecell.com.

SpongeMail is another way that Spongecell is making your life easier to manage. No complicated software – just a forward button or a CC field that's built into every Email client. It's simple. Give it a try!

Podcast

I spoke with Paul from AustinCast at length last week about web 2.0 calendars, my inability to disagree with anything Jason Fried has ever said, and how great Spongecell is.  In an odd twist of fate that is sure to have positive repercussions for Spongecell, you can barely hear me.  The podcast is available at the bottom of this post: Spongecell Podcast

API T-Shirt

Ms B has been working hard on some new API methods. A lot of these methods use read/write keys to provide authentication.

The first person to write Outlook sync for us gets a free t-shirt. Ha!

Perhaps Ms B needs an introduction. In addition to being a long time classmate/housemate/pal of mine she has also spent some time at BIG CORPORATION working on calendars. She is well aware of the perils of bi-directional synchronization with Microsoft products. BIG CORPORATION was nice enough to give her a severance package so we are putting her to work. In addition to writing new API methods she also wrote the uni-directional SpongeSync to Apple’s iPod.

Back to the point. Syncing is not easy. And that’s why we’ll give you a free t-shirt if you write an Outlook sync tool. All it has to do is keep a Spongecell calendar in sync with an Outlook calendar no matter who changes what where.

Also, whoever designs a Spongecell t-shirt for us gets a free t-shirt.

Spongecell on your iPod

SpongeSync is a new Windows application from Spongecell. It transfers any Spongecell calendar to your iPod for easy viewing on the go. Even if you use a calendar with sub-par NLP, SpongeSync can sync it to your iPod using iCalendar over http.

We love feedback – drop us a line at contact@spongecell.com.

If you are a mac user, here are instructions on how to configure iTunes/iCal to work with Spongecell.