June 2012 Summaries

The Postmark Inbound Contest was a contest where participants were asked to build an app that sends Google Alerts to Campfire using Postmark's inbound tools. The goal was to create a simple app, and the winner, Matt Gillooly, submitted a rails app that met this requirement. The app is designed to run on platforms like Heroku and allows users to easily send Google Alerts to Campfire by inserting keywords along with the campfire room. The winner's code is available on Github for others to try and contribute back.

The Postmark Bounce API has been updated, allowing users to retrieve specific bounces without first filtering by other criteria. Previously, users had to query using a filter similar to the `emailfilter` parameter, which returned a list of bounces and then required the user to sort through it to find the desired bounce. With the new update, users can use the `messageID` field on the Bounce API to retrieve a specific bounce directly, saving time and effort. This change will likely benefit many end-users by speeding up their bounce querying process.

Our team at 37signals wants to build a tool that posts Google Alerts directly into their Campfire chat client, and they're now hosting a contest for developers to create an open-sourced solution using Postmark's Inbound processing. The goal is to automate the process of receiving email alerts from Google Alerts and posting them to Campfire, with configurable rooms and keywords. To qualify, submissions must be open-sourced, hosted on Github, and include tests and work correctly with both Google Alerts and Campfire. Developers can submit their solutions until June 11th, and if selected, they'll receive 25,000 free Postmark credits.