Safe Tweeting!

I highly doubt anyone reading this post would need to be introduced what Twitter is. Almost everyone has a twitter account these days though some people never use it. Anyways, this post is for the regular twitter users.

Part of the Twittering experience is using various twitter applications. I don’t exactly mean twitter clients here. There are loads of web applications for Twitter that do useful things like giving you conversation views, tree views or maybe giving you various statistics about your twitter usage. And there are some applications that are made just for fun. And some applications that might use your twitter account for their own purposes.

Most twitter web applications use OAuth to gain access into your twitter account instead of asking for your password. Twitter OAuth page displays a message asking you whether you want to allow this application access into your twitter account.

How many of you people actually read what’s in this screen before clicking on Allow? You’re granting some third party unlimited access to your twitter account here. It’s like giving someone else your password. Don’t you think you should pay a little more attention to what you’re doing?

Some applications once signed in to your twitter just do what they’re supposed to do. But the problem is some applications do somethings they’re not supposed to do. Once granted access these applications might spam into your twitter feed during regular intervals or even send direct messages to your followers with spam messages. If an application starts misbehaving in any way Twitter has given the option to revoke access to any application.

First you login to your Twitter web and go to the Settings page. Then click on the connections tab and you will get a page like the one below.

Displayed above are some of the applications I have granted access to my twitter account. If you want to remove any of the applications from having access into your twitter account then just click on the Revoke Access link below the Application name and that application will be removed.

I hope this post has helped some of you. Remember. Before you grant access to any application look around to see if it is trustworthy. Don’t grant access to everything that wants access into your twitter account. Safe Tweeting!

Twittering via the Terminal

Ok… Quick note people.

Warning!! Extremely geeky. Don’t bother reading if you aren’t !!!

Thanks to Thameera for this tip. Then after a bit of searching I fount this. Thanks to him too. Ok. This is twittering via the terminal for Linux. First things first. You need curl for this. Install curl with the following command.

sudo apt-get install curl

Then open the text editor. Copy and paste the following code.

curl --basic --user "<User>:<Password>" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"

Replace the <User> and <Password> with your username and password. Mine would be…

curl --basic --user "chathuraw:*********" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"

Save the file as twitter. Now you have to move this file to /usr/local/bin.

sudo mv twitter /usr/local/bin

Then you have to give this file executable permissions as follows.

sudo chmod +x twitter

Well that’s it. Now you can just open a terminal and type twitter and tweet to your hearts content.

$ twitter "tweeting via the terminal.... Sooo frikkin awesome"

Cheers!!!

UPDATE : Another cool python script for Twittering from the terminal. I didn’t check this out yet though. http://jspr.tndy.me/2008/05/twitterminal-a-terminal-based-twitter-client-in-python/

A crash course on Twitter!

Hello again!!

I joined Twitter a couple of weeks back because. . . Well, I don’t really know. Maybe because Facebook tried to copy twitter on their new layout and I wanted to see the real thing in action. Anyway, despite being a Twitterer for a couple of weeks I’ve found myself rapidly addicted to the twitter world. Even though I fell in love with Twitter some of my friends who I’ve forced to join simply don’t understand it.   So I decided to share a few of the things I’ve learned about Twitter with you people.

What is this Twitter thingy?

Well first and foremost, Twitter is a microblogging service. You know the Facebook status message (Yes, the one you put “What’s on your mind” or whatever you’re doing). Well Twitter is basically the status message without the rest of Facebook. (There are loads of differences. This is just for simplicity’s sake. So the all-knowing people out there don’t try to bite my head off ). You can post anything as long as it’s below 140 characters. What you do, what’s on your mind, an interesting link you saw on the internet or anyother thing you can think of.

Benefits of using Twitter

Twitter is an instantaneous method of communication to the masses. Some of you might say “Who needs Twitter? IM is better and faster.” You see an interesting video on YouTube while you’re browsing or wish to recommend that newest book you’ve read to your friends. What do you do? IM everyone on your messenger list? No you dunghead! You Tweet it. Your followers see it and check it out. Easy as pie

Another great aspect of Twitter is you can constantly monitor if there’s anything new in something you care about. Know a blogger you like to read? Follow their Twitter (Almost all bloggers are on Twitter and will Tweet as soon as they upload a new blog post. You should be able to figure out these things on your own you know! Jeez!! ). Have an application you really like and can’t wait till the new version comes out? Follow their Twitter. Want to stalk Ashton Kutcher or Demi Moore? Follow their Twitter. Want to see what your friends are doing? Get them to join and follow their Twitter. (I’m sure you get the point by now).

You can also keep on top of news updates on Twitter as well. Follow CNN’s Twitter for the latest breaking news updates.

There are loads of other uses as well. But I’m sure you can figure those out by yourself.

How to Twitter?

I’ve seen a lot of people using the Twitter Web to post their tweets. This isn’t a good idea if you want to get into Twitter. Twitter is an instantaneous method of communication. Some news are on Twitter before they’re on any TV or Radio channels. (Of course, this requires large numbers of mobile twitterers, still a long way to gofor our country ). Anyway, the first thing you need is a good Twitter client for your PC or your mobile phones. I’ve messed around with quite a few twitter clients in the short time I’ve been on Twitter and found several very nice programs. I’ll list a few of the free ones here. There are clients you can buy too. But why should we, when there’s more than enough free stuff?

Twhirl

My favourite and default Twitter client is Twhirl. Twhirl is an Adobe AIR based cliet so its also platform independant. So whether you’re using Linux, Windows, or MAC you’ll have no problem working with it. It supports multiple accounts, has lots of color themes, URL shorteners (You need this! You have only 140 letters), Twitpicking straight from the client. Here’s a screenshot of a user profile on Twhirl on my PC. You can also follow their updates on Twitter (Obviously).

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is another Adobe AIR based client. This has almost all of the features mentioned above plus a little extra bonus. You can update your Facebook status message as you’re updating your Twitter. Pretty cool huh? Here’s a screenshot of TweetDeck.

TwitterFox

Ah. TwitterFox.The simplest of Twitter clients. This isn’t actually a standalone program. It’s just a Firefox extension. But it does it’s job admirably. This was my first Twitter client and I highly recommend it to anyone. Take a peek.

Twibble

Twibble is a great Java based mobile Twitter client I happened upon. (Thanks to Dilan for the tip). It’s still in beta stage. But it’s pretty good and gets the job done.

As I’m using a Symbian OS phone I kind of gravitated towards Gravity. This is the best mobile Twitter client I’ve seen by far. But unfortunately it’s not free. But I decided to mention it here just because it’s so great

Some words you should know!!!

Since the start of twitter there have been some new words regarding the Twitter world. Some of them make sense. Some are absolutely ridiculous. Here are some interesting ones I’ve found.

Twitterer/Tweeter – A user of Twitter
Tweet – noun: A message sent on Twitter
verb: The act of posting on Twitter
Twoosh – A full 140 character Tweet
Dweet – A Tweet sent under the influence of Alcohol
Tweetaholism – Continued Twitter use to the point of addiction
Mistweet – A tweet one regrets later
Twitterrhea – The act of sending too many Tweets
Tweeple – People on Twitter
Twitterati – Glamourous A-List twitterers everyone wants to follow
Twitosphere – The total community of Tweeters

If you want more Twitter related words Twittionary can help you out.

There. I’ve finished the crash course on Twitter. Hope to see you around Twitter soon (If you’re already not there). Don’t forget to follow me on http://twitter.com/chathuraw

Cheers!!!