It’s 5am and I can’t sleep. When this happens I usually fire up Boxee and find something to watch, so that’s what I did. I was happy to see that since the last time I used it Boxee appear to have added a bunch more internet sources, which is great. However, the following 15 minutes were nearly the most frustrating of my life so far.
Not sure if I believe this is real or not, but either way it’s a pretty cool idea.
I had a request recently to release some of the code from the TwitApps bots. The core of both bots is actually a shared email handler and I have no problem sharing it with the world.
Twitter-related stuff » Handling email notifications
On the assumption that I’ll eventually get around to sharing some more Twitter-related stuff I’ve created a new section in the projects area of this site. If there’s anything related to Twitter integration that you’d like to see me cover there please let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
A couple of days ago I released a new TwitApps tool called Follows. I know I haven’t talked about TwitApps on this blog yet – that post is coming – but if you follow me on Twitter you should be aware of it.
The Follows service monitors your followers on Twitter and sends you a daily, weekly or monthly email telling you who’s followed and who’s unfollowed you since your last email. Twitter itself has the facility to send you an email every time someone starts following you but does not offer any sort of notification when they stop.
I can see why Twitter have done it this way. When someone starts following you it’s likely you’ll want to check out their tweets and you might decide to follow them back. The same logic doesn’t really apply to when people stop following you, or does it?
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Absolute genius!
Twitter promised OAuth support a l-o-o-ong time ago, and it would appear to finally be here. Alex Payne sent a “Call for OAuth beta participants” to the developers list yesterday and had an overwhelming response. This predictably triggered a deluge of tweets and blog posts, but the one that caught my eye was on ReadWriteWeb titled “Why Twitter’s New Security Solution Could Pave the Way to a Future Web of Mashups“.
A number of things disturbed me about this post so I posted a comment or two but I believe the issues involved deserve more attention.
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A couple of months back I got an email request via my Flickr account from Schmap.com asking if they could include one of my photo’s in their next update. I rarely say no when politely asked for permission so I happily followed the link and approved it.
I just got a follow-up email from them saying the update had gone live and did indeed include that photo. However, it’s just wrong, so very very wrong.
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My latest project went live on Monday this week. It’s another Twitter-based toy along the same lines as hotornot but it uses your Twitter account and profile picture. Since launch it’s proved very successful and has spread quickly due to its viral nature.
The site is called Twitorfit and was the brainchild of a Twitter-based conversation between Nick Halstead of fav.or.it and Andy McLoughlin and Zuzanna Pasierbinska from Huddle. You can read the full story on the Twitorfit blog.
Rate users then see the top 10 “twits” and “fits”
Development of the site took a little under 20 man-hours in total from concept to launch including several rewrites of the core architecture. I’d like to thank Daniel Saxil-Nielsen, the designer at fav.or.it, for sorting out the design and Alex Forrow, their sysadmin, for sorting out the live server. They both responded to my requests quickly and efficiently leaving me able to concentrate on getting the code done.
I’m hoping to do another post with a bit more detail about how Twitorfit works, and the specific techniques I used to ensure it would stand up to the initial peak in traffic that this type of project tends to get. For now I’ll just say that it’s written in PHP5, uses a MySQL database and Memcache. It’s running on Sun hardware provided by the Startup Essentials program.
The site currently asks for your Twitter username and password when you log in and/or register which is less than ideal, but until they release their much-awaited OAuth implementation it’s the most user-friendly way to authenticate Twitter users. It does not store your password and aside from login verification and the optional tweet when you register it does not make any requests against the Twitter API as you.
In summary it’s been a fun little project to work on, and the feedback so far has been fantastic. If you’re not on Twitter yet you should be – get your account here, and when you’re done be sure to register on Twitorfit and get rating!
I finally got around to updating the 3ft9 website with the new logo and some info on the projects we’ve done or been involved in. Let me know what you think in the comments.
A while back I got introduced to the wonderful world of HDR by my good friend Jared Earle, seen here with a very big lens, and I stated at the time that I’d have a play when I got a chance. It took a while but I finally got that chance last week.
I had a week off and decided to go up to Glasgow to stay with Jared for a few days. After I’d survived the 6 hour drive from Surrey, eaten some fantastic grub (thanks Vic) and slept like a log for a while we headed north into the Highlands. Read more…
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