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Twitter Chicago Tamale Guy(s) Tracker

Submitted by clint on 30 January 2009 - 6:28pm to DIY Chicago.

Everyone loves tamales and everyone loves late night situations where a friendly stranger delivers hot fresh tamales right to your bar stool. So, after some intense conversations surrounding the Tamale Guy here in Chicago, we came up with a great idea. What if it were some how possible to follow the Tamale Guy via Twitter as he made his rounds? A user community that would tweet when and where they saw the tamale guy and then users could be able to follow the progress by following the twitter.com/tamaletracker (tamaleguy was already taken).

How it works:

- twitter users send a @Reply to @tamaletracker when they see the Tamale Guy at their favorite pub in Chicago.
- then a scheduled listening service looks for any @Replies that have come into twitter.com/tamaletracker.
- when a new tweet comes in, the twitter.com/tamaletracker account then ReTweets on their behalf.
- twitter users sign up to follow twitter.com/tamaletracker or simply go to twitter.com/tamaletracker.
- choose to recieve sms alerts when twitter.com/tamaletracker tweets.

I created this the other day and have not tested it beyond my own tweets up until now. So if anyone does choose to use this little tool please let me know what bugs you find or if it just plain doesn't work for you.

Thanks!

30 Jan21:54

Chicago Tamale Tracker

By John Geraci

I think Chicago is in the running for being the DIY-iest city around.

It would be pretty basic to abstract this idea to be a general "resource spotter" app, for any scarce resource that people in the city care about (like tamales from the Tamale Guy).

That seems like a logical next step.

Anyway, cool work Clint!

23 Feb20:21

Generic Service

By clint

Thanks John.

I'm working towards that goal of creating it as generic as possible so that anyone can sign up for the service. I'd like to expand into sms as an alternative to Tweeting updates, since Twitter is not as main stream as sms service. Any recommondations on a service that would allow me to recieve SMS updates and turn them around to a web service?

23 Feb20:29

Use TextMarks!

By dan.greenblatt

I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet, but it seems pretty rad.

textmarks.com

10 Mar07:23

Bravos from San Francsico

By disrupsean

Bravo Chicago!

San Franciscans also love their tamales, especially those delivered by our beloved Virginia the Tamale Lady.

I think your tasty city hack can get a lot of use in SF!

On the way... Thanks!

Sean

02 May21:40

Generic Service

By clint

Hey Sean - thanks for the love. I created a generic service/app that you can use to create a tamale tracker san francisco. Check it out at http://www.spotd.me. I just created this and am still in the testing phase but I would love to have you give it a test whirl if you don't mind.

Thanks!