Sarah Lacy was in Des Moines as part of her User Generated Book Tour and my wife and I were making last minute plans so at least one of us could attend the tweetup the night before the book signing. She was at work, I was at home with the girls and we were broadcasting our exchanges over twitter.

We went back and forth a couple of times on who would go and by the time my wife got home we still hadn’t come to a decision. However within a few minutes our neighbor popped over. She said she was watching our tweets and if it was okay with us she could watch the kids.

We were shocked and amazed. That night we found a babysitter over twitter and discovered that our neighbor follows both of our tweets.

On my way to a Podcamp Hawaii meeting, I walked out of my home and just as I heard the final click of doorknob meeting frame I realized I had left my set of keys inside! Armed only with my cellphone, but no internet connection I tweeted my plea via SMS.

In 2-minutes I had several names and numbers to local locksmiths and even a ride to the meeting. In 10-minutes I was paying the locksmith, retrieving my keys and heading to my meeting. I must note that at least five tweets began with, “Not in Hawaii, but here’s what I found…”

I did the same thing the very next week — I had the locksmith’s number in my contacts already!