Posts Tagged ‘tweetdeck’
July 17th, 2009
I’m sure you noticed that a few weeks ago Twitter changed the source that came unsigned via the API from web to API which could basically reveal any robot that is trying to act human, right? Well if you look at the statuses/update method in the Twitter API documentation they don’t say anything about the source parameter. Strange, right?
Working with the Twitter API: Tips & Tricks
Well I read something about it on some forums and the Twitter API development talk Google Group had a discussion about this I believe, but most people still think that it’s the X-Twitter- headers that determine the source, but it’s not. It’s way too simple and it took me a few hours to figure it out using an HTTP sniffer on TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and the others.
Turns out it’s the source parameter that is passed via POST together with the status text during the statuses/update call. So usually you would do something like:
$postargs = array("status" => "I'm tweeting via API!");
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postargs);Now, how about Seesmic Desktop?
$postargs = array(
"status" => "I'm tweeting via Seesmic Desktop!",
"source" => "seesmicdesktop"
);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postargs);Or TweetDeck perhaps?
$postargs = array(
"status" => "I'm tweeting via TweetDeck!",
"source" => "tweetdeck"
);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postargs);Pretty cool, huh? Here’s a brief list of sources to pick from:
And I do believe that it’s the same way for all the other clients. Lowercase and no spaces. It is funny though watching a robot tweet 10 tweets per minute via TwitterFon ;)
May 12th, 2009
I’m very glad to announce that the Twitter Friendly Links video I did a couple of days ago is now hosted at WordPress.tv! Big shout out to Michael who uploaded the video in HQ – thanks Mike!
The WordPress Movie Theater
There’s been a plugin update a few hours ago – 0.3.1. I managed to suit Twitter Friendly Links to blogs that run WordPress in a different directory. Also got a report that it doesn’t work for certain linking style in the multi-user WordPress (MU). Hope the new version fixes the issue. Oh, and I’m still looking for the plugins that conflict with Twitter Friendly Links (as reported earlier on the plugin page), can’t find it anywhere, and forums are dead too, how sad :( If anybody finds out something about it, please feedback – that’ll be so helpful!
And for those of you wondering what’s next… Here are some plans:
- Customizable text for the Tweet area in Edit Post/Page forms
- A simple API which will take a link to a certain post on input and output the short link for the post. This will hopefully let us pick Twitter Friendly Links in software like TweetDeck (instead of the standard tinyurl, trim, …) if everything goes well. I’ll be counting on you to vote ;)
- Also need to come up with something to make third-party plugins (such as Twitter Tools, Sociable, Tweetmeme) tweet out cool links instead of TinyURLs
Guess that’s all for now. Suggestions are still welcome!
April 7th, 2009
Yeah I know there are loads of articles on following nice people on Twitter and getting followed back, but I found this method using WeFollow and TweetDeck very effective. And remember, in social media it’s not only about the quantity!
Socializing on Twitter: Tips & Tricks
Most of you heard about a Twitter directory called Twellow. Well, to me it’s kinda old and also annoying when you have to register and fill out your profile, then browse through people by interest and start following some (ordered by popularity of course). I don’t like this method because:
- You’re less likely to get a followback, ’cause the tweeps on the first few pages are like the celebrities of whatever category you’re browsing
- You have to look through their latest activities, to make sure they still tweet about categories they’ve gone for
- There are loads of people that submit themselves into more than 5 categories – I doubt that they’re gonna read your tweets, cause they’re focused on promoting theirs
- Twellow is ugly
Take a look at WeFollow. The title says it all – User Powered Twitter Directory. The best thing about WeFollow is that you don’t even have to register. You don’t even have to follow @wefollow (although I encourage you to, just to keep up with what’s going on there). The steps are pretty easy: browse to add to directory page, authorize WeFollow on Twitter and voila. Pick up to three hash tags to follow and you’ll see yourself tweet a “wefollow #tag1 #tag2 #tag3″ public. Okay, that’s only the beginning.
Now the real fun comes when you start to look for people to follow. The traditional method is opening up a search screen in TweetDeck with a ‘#tag1′ query to find people buzzing about tag1. Yeah, you’ll find loads of people using #tag1 in their tweets, but that doesn’t mean that they’re very interested in #tag1 and they might have just used it once in a month, and there you go running after them… Nah! Remember @wefollow. Tweeting out wefollow … expects you to actually follow (!!) your chosen tags, rather then just to get listed in the directory (some still don’t get the point though). I follow five tags, three of which are on my wefollow list (you can’t get more). Oh when I say ‘follow a tag’ I mean have it open as a Search ‘#tag’ column in TweetDeck (hope you get what I mean).
Anyways, back to following. Once you have a Search ‘#tag’ open, use a Filter and add ‘wefollow’. All the tweets in the column will look similar to ‘wefollow #yourtag and two more’. Now, these are the people, who joined the directory several minutes ago (or hours.. or days.. depending on the tag you’ve chosen). Go ahead and follow some (just make sure the other two tags are not completely irrelevant to the first – generally a bad idea). There’s a big chance you’ll get a follow back, especially if they’re at around 100-500 followers. And those are the people that interest you the most, not rockstars and celebrities.
Oh, and please turn off those auto-reply on follow – they’re way too annoying! Thanks.
February 24th, 2009
Wha? Is Gmail Down Again?
As many of you have already heard, Gmail servers have been down lately and Twitter was there to prove this. Instead of asking “Is it me or is Gmail offline” you could have just looked at the TwitScoop realtime cloud and remain silent, or perhaps tweet some “Experiencing problems with #gmail too…” just to keep up the trends. Wonderful, huh? I’m also glad that they’ve integrated TwitScoop into TweetDeck, here’s a screenshot:
Good Luck and don’t forget about the Hashtags!
January 19th, 2009
Hey just got TweetDeck running on my Fedora 10 Laptop. It took me about 20 minutes to figure this out, I just had some permission issues (error 5100). Go get the latest Adobe Air from the official Adobe Air website and save it somewhere. Then you’ll have to chmod +x the .bin file to be able to execute it. Run it using your root account – that should install Adobe Air and some utilities for Air application management, just like Windows would (I guess).
Feel the Pain: Running Twitter Clients on Linux
Then, download the latest TweetDeck Air application for Linux. Now here’s where I got the permissions issues. You have to run the TweetDeck installation as root, otherwise you will not be able to write to the /opt directory – that’s standard for Air applications, though I wasn’t able to write to /home/myuser either, although I had full rights to access that, so I guess the right place is actually /opt. Open your terminal, logon to root and try the following:
/usr/bin/Adobe\ AIR\ Application\ Installer
That should launch the Adobe AIR app installer. Pick the TweetDeck .air file and attempt to install it. Worked for me. You can create the shortcut icons, but you shouldn’t launch TweetDeck after installation, cause you wouldn’t wanna run it as root, right? After the setup’s finished check out your Applications – Accessories menu, you should see TweetDeck.
Hope that helped. Used to TwitterFox but I guess TwitterDeck will do just great. Don’t forget to choose the right tweets update configuration (I got it working at about 80%). Don’t overload the API and don’t forget to switch off any other Twitter clients you use before launching TwitterDeck.
Updating TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop on Fedora
I’ve stopped using TweetDeck for a while due to a couple of reasons. I got my Twitter developer account which gives me 20,000 API calls per hour (unlike the ordinary accounts with 100), and the new TweetDeck doesn’t work with that amount (I’ve no idea why), so I had to switch to Seesmic Desktop which is also based on Adobe AIR, thus cross-platform and I managed to install it on my Fedora 10 machine using the above method.
Updating TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop (and all other Adobe AIR applications) is quite straightforward in Windows and Mac, but I came up with the same permissions issues in Linux. It seems that we’re not allowed to use the auto-update feature (the popup-box that shows up when you run TweetDeck and asks you to automatically update the software). So we’ll probably have to go the other way round. Go to TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop official website and download the latest .AIR distro, save it somewhere, and as root run the AIR Application Installer program:
/usr/bin/Adobe\ AIR\ Application\ Installer
Select your .AIR file and update. After the update it automatically runs the new version of TweetDeck (or Seesmic Desktop). Close that. It’s being run under root, while your profile is on your regular user. Just start as a regular user and everything should be fine. Worked for me ;)
Good luck!
Updated June 20th 2009
