Web 2.0

Know Your (Twitter) Limits

bob — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:34:10 -0400

For those who are developing anything that uses the Twitter API or even if you just like to experiment with Twitter standalone or alternate web-clients there is a hard limit (currently 100) on the number of calls per hour. This, however, is not made obvious since it requires grabbing an XML file from an http Basic Auth protected URL.

Enter the “Twitter Rate Limit” Dashboard Widget:

With it, you will know how many API calls you have left and when the counter gets reset.

This is version 1.1. Version 1.0 was inspired by @aadom who was also the UI designer of 1.1.

Version 1.2 will be out in a bit as I really need to fix the gauge colors.

Drop a note in the comments with your suggestions/gripes/accolades.

Get Friends' Facebook Status Updates In Your Twitter Feed

bob — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:55:33 -0400

I was musing on Twitter about the need for the ability to get the status updates from friends who only use Facebook incorporated into my Twitter feed (so I do not have to view Facebook as often). While writing a bot would have been cool, I dislike re-inventing the wheel and came up with a way to do it by pairing some web “services” together (not actually using web services per se).

To do this, you’ll need to setup a new Twitter account (I suggest using your “TwitterUsername_fb”), unless you want all your followers seeing all your friends’ updates. You can secure the updates to this account if you wish. You’ll need to use a secondary e-mail account (Twitter does not allow dups). I also really don’t like giving my main Twitter credentials to external services.

I also suggest getting an OpenID as one of the sites you’ll be using is twitterfeed and it prefers OpenID logins (I have a free OpenID through Verisign, but you already have one if you are an AOL, Blogger, Flickr/Yahoo, or WordPress users [and others]…full details on the OpenID link I provided).

With those credentials in hand, fire up your browser and head to Facebook and then choose to use the old Facebook (it’s just temporary, but one step will fail if you’re not in “old Facebook mode”). Highlight “Friends” and select “Status Updates”:

On the status update screen, look on the right under “Subscribe” for a “Friends’ Status Feed” link. Right click on it and copy it (however you do that with your browser/system). Save and protect this URL!!! It has direct access to the status updates of your friends (and, hence, part of your account) so you should not disclose it without consideration.

The next step is to go to twitterfeed and login:

Once you login, create a new feed and populate it with your alternate Twitter credentials and Facebook Friends’ Status RSS feed URL. I highly recommend testing both your login and feed (via the provided links). You can tweak the other settings to match your preferences. The only downside is that if your friends have any more than five (5) updates since the last check, you will miss them. You can choose an alternate feed-post-to-Twitter provider (or roll your own) if this becomes an issue).

The last step is to follow your alternate Twitter user id and you will begin receiving updates every 30 minutes (or longer, depending on how often your friends post status updates).

This setup is only as robust as Twitter, Facebook RSS and twitterfeed, so you have no guarantees from me on how stable it will be, but it has been working well since I configured it.

If you have an alternate solution, definitely drop a note in the comments!

Hiveminder Security Only For Paying Customers

bob — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:22:02 -0500

UPDATE: Thoughtful response from Jesse @ Hiveminder in the comments.

Fans of Getting Things Done [GTD] are on a never-ending quest for the ultimate solution to help them get and stay organized. Remember The Milk [RTM] is one Web 2.0 site growing in popularity amongst the GTD-followers which allows you to perform task management via a slick web interface, from instant messaging services, on Twitter and even has a robust API for custom integration (not to mention some very interesting Google Apps interfaces). Amazingly enough, it even allows you to perform actions over SSL so your credentials and task bits remain secure (if you’re into that whole security thing when it comes to putting your information on Web 2.0 sites).

Contrast that with another contender I just learned about - Hiveminder. It has the similar integration points and facilities (some not as spiffy as RTM), but an entry in their FAQ gave me pause:

You’re not using SSL; how do I know my password is safe?
If you have a Javascript-enabled browser (most of them are these days), then your password will be encrypted when logging in, before being sent to us over the internet. But we also offer SSL encryption as a feature to pro users.

In other words: we don’t care about the security of your data unless you pay us to.

That is a fairly cavalier attitude given that their competition lets you encrypt all web traffic whether you are entering login credentials or just plain browsing.

In many cases, Web 2.0-ish sites put features first and security second (or third), and my concern is that others will either adopt this model of “Features? Sure, you can have ‘em! You want security? Cough up some dough!” or alter their terms of service to switch to this business model at some point after they gather a decent user-base.

This is yet another example of why you need to read the fine print when choosing a product or service and - especially for Web 2.0 sites - ensure that you have complete control over your data.

Drupal 6 RC1 Released

bob — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:42:00 -0500

The fine folks over @ Drupal announced the first release candidate for the 6.x code stream. [NOTE: RDN is powered by Drupal]

There are *tons* of new features including a better installer, core support for OpenID, “actions” and “triggers” for a horde of Drupal system events and significantly improved handling of internationalization (more info on features on the beta announcement page).

If you run your own site and aren’t using Drupal, you should be. The developer community behind it is amazing and highly talented, there is a serious commitment to security and they’ve garnered support from “big names” like Sun and Google. What are you waiting for? Stop reading this an go download it now!

Integrated 'Quick Hits' From tumblr

bob — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:57:31 -0500

Some noteworthy items do not warrant a full-on blog post…at least that’s [part of] the premise of tumblr. I - mostly - tend to agree, and fearless readers should now see my tumblr feed as a right-hand block.

You can also bookmark the gathered post directly or just subscribe to that RSS feed for updates.

I’m thinking of a weekly “best of my tumbler quick hits” post, but we’ll see how that manages to manifest itself.

Google News Bar For Your Site

bob — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:42:32 -0500

Like the AJAX-y news box at the top of the site? You can get your own, courtesy of the Google News Bar Wizard.

It has a full API and can be displayed in a couple different formats (so far, vertical or horizontal).

If you use the wizard, it generates a bit of HTML that you can just add to your existing site (provided you have a Google account and API key for your site). There are some interesting possibilities with this. For instance, altering the news displayed based on a search performed in your blog. For now, I’ll just keep playing with the keywords to try and find the best news mix.