A solid (and maybe better) replacement for Twitter tracking.
The "tracking" feature in Twitter had become a staple of my communication. I used it to catch @colbypalmer, @itweet or @colbyworld replies, and to find out what people were saying about iTweet, my Twitter client, or my other projects. It's also a great way of monitoring your competition! It was recently disabled as a part of the Twitter downgrades, and I found that I was missing replies (checking the Replies tab for all three of my accounts is something I just can't keep up with) and feeling "out of the loop" as far as my product's relationship to its users.
Enter Tweetbeep.com: "Like Google Alerts for Twitter". This tool was created by Michael Jensen, @mdjensen on Twitter. Tweetbeep scans Twitter for terms or usernames (they use the excellent Summize for this) and emails you with your results.
It's not as real-time as the original tracking, but that's kind of a nice thing as you can opt to check for your updates hourly or daily, and you don't get a million text messages all day long. You can also add links to your search, which are gathered in real-time; Tweetbeep will even find links that have been masked via a TinyURL-type service, which is awesome since most links on Twitter are TinyURLs.
The part that I really like is that it's archivable, both in your email and aggregated in tweetbeep.com itself, which is a huge plus! Now I don't have to feel like I'm missing out by not following everybody on Twitter.
Ok son, put the Twitter down and back away slowly...
Twitter sent some downtime notices today via a regular friends_timeline JSON request. Even though the downtime is a bummer, this kind of error reporting is really nice, as you aren't left with that "should I keep refreshing the page?" feeling.
Often Twitter crashes return full XHTML pages to API calls, like the "Too many tweets!" page with the whale that we've been seeing lately. These aren't parsed into a Twitter feed like this error message was (API rate limit notices and other errors are returned as valid JSON though). This can be worked around by looking at the HTTP code that is returned, but I wish there was some way for the app to return valid JSON error messages to API requests instead of the default XHTML crash pages.
Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.
WebKit's new JavaScript interpreter may improve performance for the iPhone.
The Surfin' Safari blog announced SquirrelFish today, a new javascript interpreter for WebKit that is 1.6 times faster than the current interpreter. This is incredible, as Safari is already a super-fast browser, but as John Gruber points out in Daring Fireball, it may mean improved JavaScript support for the iPhone.
If you've read much of this blog, you already know my opinion about the whole "JavaScript on the iPhone really sucks" thing. I was recently reminded of this when translating some jQuery/JSON scripting from the Web to the iPhone. What ran as a fairly simple and speedy app on the Web became unusable on the iPhone, and I had to strip out tons of code to get even basic functions up to speed.
Keep your fingers crossed that SquirrelFish makes it to the iPhone, and soon! I'm not sure if its release so close to the WWDC conference means it won't be making it to the upgraded "iPhone 2" that everyone is expecting to be announced, or if an iPhone software update will be released after the new iPhones hit the market. The sooner the better!
The creators of SquirrelFish say this is just the beginning of new breakthroughs in compile times, and it sounds like they've done some very intensive and boring research to create their mutant aquatic rodent. Thank goodness for the brilliant and patient minds (read: obsessives) who sort these complicated things out so the rest of us can have a better Web experience.
Oh, and yes... as everyone seems to notice, the SquirrelFish logo is way badass. It looks like it may evolve into a StimpyFish in a later release.
Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.
And our tumultuous relationship with the Bluebird of Happiness/Crappiness...
Twitter has decided to remove a certain call from their API that the iTweet 2 private beta relied on to create the "ticker" effect that kept it updating at nearly real-time speeds. The rate limit for API calls also remains handicapped, cut to 30 per hour from the usual 70. This makes using Twitter API tools extremely inconvenient, and developing them is also quite frustrating.
For now I have removed the "ticker" feature and the friends timeline will refresh every 140 seconds, though this number may be adjusted slightly as I attempt to keep the page open and in use today. (Big thanks to all my helpful beta testers for your excellent feedback on the last iTweet 2 development cycle!) Further development on the beta will continue when the API rate limit returns to normal. Until then, Twitter API development is a waste of time as most people seem to be ditching API apps for the non-limited Web site.
This is actually a good thing for me, as I am working hard on developing some othertools for The Illusion Factory that I will be posting more about soon. Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I've been in "workshop mode" for quite some time but I will be posting details about the new ideas, tools and projects I've been working with in the coming weeks. (I call this "pimp" mode as I will be hawking the bejeezus out of my work.) I'm building some really neat ways of connecting with people, and I am very excited to share them as soon as possible!
Twitter has been very cool about keeping the community updated on its current status, present challenges and plans for future improvement, despite some reallynasty attacks and and the lively scrutiny of about a million people speculating on who is to blame, or how a business model could be developed, or how they canfixTwitter'sproblems in a single blog post/comment/tweet. They were also kind enough to post a poll in the dev group about removing the friends_timeline/username API call. This is not something they HAVE to do, so I thought it was nice of them to bother. And — even though I was getting great use out of this feature — I voted that if removing it meant a tangible improvement to Twitter's stability, I would take it out back and shoot it myself.
Here's why I would vote to remove a feature that made iTweet's beta the most bitchin' Twitter interface for the Web: The problems Twitter is suffering from are going to take a while to solve, and more downgrades may happen. The Twitter team is working on it, and I am willing to be patient during the downtimes and downgrades while they get their app sorted out. I enjoy using Twitter and making fun stuff with their API. But I have lots of other things that I like, and plenty of projects in the works. I know they are doing their best to improve and/or rebuild their service, so when they've gotten through the current setbacks, I'll be back for more. Rather than getting cranky about it, obsessing over it, or otherwise wasting my mental energy on it, I'll just go play with some other toys until this one gets glued back together again.
And of course, in the meantime a shinier toy may come along and Twitter may end up collecting dust. That is the risk they are running every day that their service is downgraded... and I am sure no one is more aware of this than the Twitter team themselves.
Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.
New site creates a word cloud from your Twitter feed.
There's a great new Twitter service called Tweet Clouds, that will make a word cloud out of your Twitter timeline. Here's mine:
It's neat to see which words jump out. Some are obvious (iTweet, iPhone) but I am surprised at the weight of a couple words ("new" is one of the biggest words, I don't know what that's all about). It also shows the people that I converse with the most and that's kind of cool to see.
I also like that "love" and "lt3" are right next to each other - "lt3" being how Tweet Clouds reads "less-than-three" <3 hearts.
This is an inventive and useful way of analyzing the content of your Twitter posts. Kudos to John Krutsch for the scripting and Jared Stein for the design.
You can see my full-size Tweet Cloud here.
You can follow my Twitter updates here, my Twitter handle is @colbypalmer.
The "tracking" feature in Twitter had become a staple of my communication. I used it to catch @colbypalmer, @itweet or @colbyworld replies, and to find out what people were saying about iTweet, my Twitter client, or my other projects. It's also a great way of monitoring your competition! It was recently disabled as a part of the Twitter downgrades, and I found that I was missing replies (checking the Replies tab for all three of my accounts is something I just can't keep up with) and feeling "out of the loop" as far as my product's relationship to its users.
It's not as real-time as the original tracking, but that's kind of a nice thing as you can opt to check for your updates hourly or daily, and you don't get a million text messages all day long. You can also add links to your search, which are gathered in real-time; Tweetbeep will even find links that have been masked via a TinyURL-type service, which is awesome since most links on Twitter are TinyURLs.
