In my spare time I’ve been working on a small project called @getencouraged.

If you can’t guess by the name, it involves Twitter.

You can find it here: http://encourage.ruzuku.com/

The idea behind the project is that you can visit the website and get a stream of encouraging quotes whenever you want.  You can also follow getencouraged on Twitter and receive the same quotes in your favorite Twitter app.  Of course, this wouldn’t slot nicely into Web 2.0 and the Twitter scene if there wasn’t audience participation.  Anyone is welcome to send their encouraging quotes to @getencouraged over Twitter and they will be shown on the website and retweeted to the getencouraged Twitter feed.

Recently @getencouraged has picked up a bit of press from Wayne Sutton as well as from the North Carolina Startup blog.  I wasn’t expecting the press, so I’m a bit late in getting this blog post out.

@getencouraged was the idea of Rick and Abe of More Better Labs.  It is a prelude to the coming launch of Ruzuku, an application focused on goal achievement and getting things done.

I’d also be remiss not to mention Jackson Fox, who has developed the front end of @getencouraged while I’ve developed the back end.

As far as coding goes, @getencouraged isn’t anything spectacular.  It’s written in Ruby, consisting of two parts: the website and a retweet script.  It’s built using the Twitter gem and the Sinatra framework.

The plan is to eventually open source the code, so look for that in the future.  I’ll be sure to announce it here once that is done.

Let me know what you think about @getencouraged.  Feedback helps the guys of More Better Labs and me to provide you with a better product.

Update 5/21/2009: The code is now open sourced, see more info here.