Show IH: Check-Stat.us - Answer a question, on a regularly-scheduled basis, via email

Check-Stat.us

tldr: https://check-stat.us

I'm finally sharing this with someone, exciting.

I am working on a service that I haven't been able to describe well yet but this description is good enough for now - this service lets you use email to update your status on some specific question, via email, as often as you'd like.

I had the idea listening to a podcast. Because their release schedule is intermittent, and because their audience is dedicated and always looking forward to the next episode, their audience tweet at them "is there going to be an episode this week" - they get this question constantly, so their options are ignore the user, or answer it over and over again. Additionally, there is no simple API call that can be made to get the answer to this question. But it is an easy question for the hosts to answer. It just "yes", "no", and sometimes "likely."

My solution is a simple email that is sent to the podcast host on Monday morning asking - "Will a new show be published this week" with these 3 possible options presented as hyperlinks in the email. The host gets the email in their favorite email client, or on their phone and simple tap the hyperlink. The URL contains a temporary auth token that lets me identify the user and update the status.

The show's audience is then directed to check out their custom site to get an up to date to this question at any time. They may even be able to subscribe to be notified any time the answer to question is updated, or only when it changes - email or sms (I'm looking at you smsqueue.io @IanClark)

I've built a pitch page at a temp URL that attempts to explain this use case a few others.

• I'd love to get some feedback on the pitch page.
• Even more, I'd like to get feedback on the concept of the service.
• I'm looking for additional use cases I may not have thought of.

If you could use the service, the beta list is wired up on the site, please sign up and I'll give you free early access when I get it up and running.

Thanks everyone!

https://check-stat.us