Kisco Information Systems has announced the release of a new interface to the Twitter social networking service. SNDTWEET runs on the IBM System i and can be used to post messages through Twitter. Twitter can appear to be an unusual application for the IBM System i community. When you log in to create your Twitter account, the objective presented to you is an emphasis on "What Are You Doing?", a questionable business need. If, however, you think of Twitter as an SMS service (Short Message Service), a concept that has been around for a much longer period of time, then you can start to see through the hype to find that this can be used for very legitimate purposes in your System i shop. A Twitter post is called a "Tweet" and is a character based message with a limit of 140 characters. Twitter has the ability to share event information immediately with multiple users, connecting to them on their PCs, cell phones or PDAs.

Some good uses that Kisco recommends for Twitter include:

• System Monitoring--You can add the SNDTWEET to your CL programs to send out notifications when the program is done or when error situations are encountered.
• Message Monitoring--You can set up a program to monitor your system operator message queue. If a message is sent that requires a response, your monitoring program can react by sending a Tweet to put your following users on notice that there is a problem.
• User Tweets--Twitter can be used to enhance communication between team members on a development project, or any other project for that matter. If your development team are located in physically different places, Twitter can help improve the level of communication between team members. When one person gets something done or identifies an issue, it can be immediately shared with all team members.
• File Monitoring--You may have a situation where you want to "watch" file update activity for a critical file or for a file that should not normally be updated. You could implement a file trigger program for the watched file and then have that trigger program submit a Tweet when update activity (or delete activity, etc) takes place.
• Company Promotions--Many companies are finding that Twitter is a great way to keep customers and potential customers on board with current events. With a simple CL program, you could have your marketing (or other) folks maintain a database of future Tweets to be sent and have them go out on a regular schedule.
• Personal Tweets--The SNDTWEET command can be used for any Twitter account. All you need to supply is your Twitter ID and password and you can send a Tweet for any account.

SNDTWEET, is priced at $295 for a single partition installation on any IBM System i computer including Power Systems, i5, iSeries and AS400. For companies with several systems, Kisco offers multiple-license discounts. An LPAR price of $495 lets you install SNDTWEET in multiple partitions for a single price.. Kisco Information Systems offers a free 30-day evaluation of the product that can be downloaded with complete software documentation in PDF format from http://www.kisco.com/sndtweet. To obtain a free evaluation on CD call Kisco at (518) 897-5002 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..