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Posts Tagged ‘Tweetie’

How to use the updated Instapaper Pro with Tweetie 2

Filed under: iPhone

Instapaper Pro has been updated to version 2.2. Its creator, Marco Arment, wrote about some of the process behind adding a new feature called “Return to Position.” If you enjoy hearing developers sweat the details, it’s a great read. There’s also a full changelog for those who want more details on the new version.

I’ve been using Instapaper Pro a lot more recently after making a few changes to my workflow on my iPhone and Mac. I setup the “Read Later” bookmarklet installed properly from the Instapaper website. (An even easier method is to use Quix which I mentioned the other day.) I also started following the “companion site” Marco started especially for Instapaper called “Give Me Something To Read” which is a selection of interesting articles hand-picked by Richard Dunlop-Walters.

The last step was setting up Tweetie 2 on the iPhone to send web pages I wanted to read later to Instapaper. This is pretty simple given Tweetie 2’s built-in Instapaper integration. Just tap the “forward arrow” button at the bottom-right corner when reading a web page from Tweetie 2’s integrated browser and then choose “Read Later.” The first time you do that, it will ask for your Instapaper login/password. After that pages will be sent directly to Instapaper for your later reading.

As I have been getting more interested in putting Instapaper to fuller use, I stumbled on Marco’s instructions on how to use Instapaper’s formatting tool (or “mobilizer”) for all web pages which are opened in Tweetie 2. Despite the fact that these are published on Instapaper’s website, few people seem to know about it.

Read on to see how to to configure Tweetie 2 to take full advantage of Instapaper’s formatting tool. Instapaper Pro has been updated to version 2.2. Its creator, Marco Arment, wrote about some of the process behind adding a new feature called “Return to Position.” If you enjoy hearing developers sweat the details, it’s a great read. There’s also a full changelog for those who want more details on the new version.

I’ve been using Instapaper Pro a lot more recently after making a few changes to my workflow on my iPhone and Mac. I setup the “Read Later” bookmarklet installed properly from the Instapaper website. (An even easier method is to use Quix which I mentioned the other day.) I also started following the “companion site” Marco started especially for Instapaper called “Give Me Something To Read” which is a selection of interesting articles hand-picked by Richard Dunlop-Walters.

The last step was setting up Tweetie 2 on the iPhone to send web pages I wanted to read later to Instapaper. This is pretty simple given Tweetie 2’s built-in Instapaper integration. Just tap the “forward arrow” button at the bottom-right corner when reading a web page from Tweetie 2’s integrated browser and then choose “Read Later.” The first time you do that, it will ask for your Instapaper login/password. After that pages will be sent directly to Instapaper for your later reading.

As I have been getting more interested in putting Instapaper to fuller use, I stumbled on Marco’s instructions on how to use Instapaper’s formatting tool (or “mobilizer”) for all web pages which are opened in Tweetie 2. Despite the fact that these are published on Instapaper’s website, few people seem to know about it.

Read on to see how to to configure Tweetie 2 to take full advantage of Instapaper’s formatting tool.

TUAWHow to use the updated Instapaper Pro with Tweetie 2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quix makes bookmarklets even easier to use

Filed under: Internet Tools

Bookmarklets are one of my favorite things. I have an entire folder of them in my Safari Bookmark Bar for Instapaper and Readability and bit.ly and Pukka and Tumblr and … well, you get the idea. They’re incredibly handy for doing “something” with the current webpage that you are viewing, or quickly looking up other information.

Quix has come up with a way to make them even better. It calls itself “Your Bookmarklets, On Steroids” and it’s hard to argue with that description. Imagine all of your bookmarklets together in one, and being able to come up with shortcuts to trigger each one.

The interface is extremely minimal: a javascript popup window with a text input space. What you type in that space dictates what happens next. Quix comes with a bunch of commands already built-in, and using them is a breeze. The syntax couldn’t be simpler: just type a command shortcut (such as “imdb”) followed by a word or words (like “ghostbusters” or “raiders of the lost ark”), then press Return. As Jeff Goldblum used to say “There’s no step three.” Some of the other built-in commands:

• Search IMDB: “imdb search word(s)“
• Search Google: “g search word(s)“
• Search Google Images: “img search word(s)“
• Search Wikipedia: “w search word(s)“
• Search only the current site using Google: “gs search word(s)“
• Reformat the current page using Readability: “read”
• Share on Tumblr: “tumblr”
• Share on Facebook: “fb”
• Share on Delicious: “db”
• Clip current page in Evernote: “evernote”

There are scads more for shortening links, sending the page to other programs like CSSEdit, MarsEdit, Pukka, Tweetie, or many others. and if you don’t find the one you want, you can add your own using Quix’s easy syntax in a plain text file (Mine is available for anyone who wants to use it.)

If you still are not convinced, checkout their two minute video which shows it in action. By the time I finished watching it, I was already sold. Instead of an entire folder of bookmarklets, I have one for Quix, which does everything that I did before, and more.

Oh, and one more thing: since this is just javascript, it also works on Mobile Safari on the iPhone. Ever tried to find a specific word on a long page of text in Mobile Safari? It can be a real hassle. With Quix, just type “find search word(s)” and Quix will highlight all instances of the word on the current page and show you the first one.

Quix is incredibly handy. Check it out at Quixapp.com.

TUAWQuix makes bookmarklets even easier to use originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of Logging In to Twitter? Seamless App Integration On the Way

It’s been just about a year now since Twitter started using OAuth as a solution for connecting with third-party applications, but to this day we still find situations where we are asked to enter our user name and password.

According to a blog post by a member of Twitter’s API/Platform team, we may not need to worry about this particular nuisance, and potential security hole, much longer.

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Raffi Krikorian, a self-professed “hacker, writer, and … tinkerer”, made some waves in the Twitter development arena late into last night with his blog post, which proposes a solution to a problem many developers have been keeping an eye on.

“We really want to get people to switch over and stop using Basic Authentication when talking to our API in a production manner,” he writes. “Why? Basic Authentication is, simply, horribly insecure.”

Here’s the problem, as Krikorian describes it:

You’re an OAuth enabled Twitter client, and you’ve already authorized your user. You user wants to use a media providing service like TwitPic. TwitPic, currently, asks for the username and password of your user so it can store the photo on behalf of the Twitter user. You don’t have that username and password, so how do you give the ability to TwitPic to verify the identity of your user?

Krikorian is proposing a solution he calls “OAuth identification delegation”, wherein the application your using, Tweetie in his example, passes along its OAuth authorization to TwitPic, which TwitPic can then use to verify its actions as authorized. Right now, using TwitPic requires you to enter your user name and password separately.

For now, he says the idea is still in development, writing “once I think we’ve come upon the best solution, I’ll write this up more formally, as well as port it to OAuth WRAP/2.0 (where Twitter is headed).”

Krikorian included a diagram of his solution and is soliciting feedback on his blog.

OAuth Identity Verification Delegation Example Workflow v0.2

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Twitter Acquires Mixer Labs To Step Up Geo-Location

Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced on the company blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creators of GeoAPI. In a nutshell, GeoAPI provides developers with the ability to query the world through services which include a reverse geocoder; deep data about 16 million businesses and tens of thousands of points of interest; a writable layer for developers to annotate the world and do complex geo-queries; and location-enabled media layers (e.g., Twitter and Flickr). Just recently, they added an iPhone SDK to speed up mobile development as well.

GeoAPI will be integrated directly into the Twitter API, speeding up Twitter’s efforts in the geo-location space. In August 2009, Twitter first announced that they’re getting into the geo-location game as well. And, in September, a lot of you started seeing the Geo API in action through apps like Tweetie, Birdfeed, etc.

Geo-location has been a hot topic these last few months with contenders including Foursquare, Gowalla (which recently took a hefty amount of funding in), Stalqer, Seesmic Web, and many more applications.

It’ll be interesting to see how companies like SimpleGeo will thrive in the space now, especially since a lot of SimpleGeo’s data is Twitter and social network based.

Mixer Labs actually started out as TownMe, a site that is a comprehensive guide to pretty much everything that’s relevant at the local level, from restaurant reviews to the best schools and hospitals in town.

It’s good to note that Mixer Labs are all ex-Google employees. CEO ELad Gil and Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver were both on the Geo panel at our Real Time Crunchup in November.

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Open Messaging Here We Come: Tumblr Releases Twitter Client API

Twitter client developers will be pleased to note that popular light blogging platform Tumblr now supports a Tweetie and Twitterific compatible API. In a recent blog post, the company explains how the API will help Twitter clients support Tumblr. While the release allows for similar posting and reading capabilities to last week’s WordPress API announcement, it’s a coup for those looking to Twitter to become the open messaging standard.

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In response to today’s Tumblr announcement, RSS pioneer and blogger Dave Winer writes, “Conventional wisdom says that open standards are created by endless deliberations among experts and big tech companies, and those sometimes gain traction, but this is how it usually happens. Someone goes first. No one thinks of it as an open standard. Then someone clones it. All of a sudden people get ideas. Inspired, someone goes third. At this point it’s inevitable that there will be a fourth and fifth and so on.”

Last week ReadWriteWeb suggested that a publish/subscribe standard was already beginning to take shape with both the WordPress API and Twitter/Feedburner integration. As of today, we may be one step closer to a web where content feeds are standardized and portable across a variety of platforms and services.

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Vote Now For Your Favorite Web Products of 2009

Over December we have published ten Top 10 lists for the best products of 2009, in categories ranging from Consumer Web Apps to Real-Time Technologies. Now we’re opening up our selections for you to vote on. We’ve embedded a poll below, with all 100 products that the ReadWriteWeb team selected.

We invite you to vote for your favorite web products of 2009. You can select up to 10 products. If you don’t see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we’ll count that as a vote too.

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We will announce the top 10, along with the full results, at the end of this week.

Note: the poll is randomly ordered, but can can also view an alphabetical list below.

What are your best products of 2009? (multiple choice)(polling)

Top 100 Web Products of 2009, Alphabetical

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First Look: Interview with Tim Haines, creator of Favit for iPhone

Filed under: Cool tools, App Store

If you read Twitter for laughs, you might be familiar with Favstar, a website which compiles the funniest Twitter posts each day, as determined by the number of ’stars’ (which Twitter calls ‘favorites’).

The developer behind Favstar, Tim Haines, has released a new iPhone app called Favit [iTunes Link] which is now available in the App Store. I’ve talked with Tim about Favstar since shortly after it was released and I’ve been a beta tester for Favit.

If you are familiar with other Twitter clients like Tweetie or Twitterrific, I should tell you right away that Favit is nothing like them. Favit is part of a small group of “helper” apps for Twitter. For example, Birdhouse [iTunes link] is an app meant to help you write (and rewrite) your best/funniest Twitter posts (see previous coverage of Birdhouse). Likewise, Favit is meant to help you find the best/funniest Twitter posts from others.

Favstar, like Favrd, is open to everyone, but tends to cater to a specific group of Twitter users. Favit will appeal to that group, but also has the potential to help you find a host of new and enjoyable folks to follow on Twitter, especially if you’re there for the funny.

How It Works

Favit has a very simple user interface. When you launch it, you will see one Twitter post, shown in the image here. If you want to add it to your favorites, tap the star and it will turn yellow. If you want to see another, simply swipe from right to left.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh, did you notice anything missing from the Twitter post? It’s anonymous, with no indication who wrote it. As the saying goes, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Those who are familiar with Favstar/Favrd know that sometimes it seems like some people get stars just for scratching their backsides. By reading in Favit, you can make sure that you are responding to what was said rather than who said it. In fact, it can be fun to try to guess who wrote what.

What do you do when you’re ready to have the author revealed?

Continue reading First Look: Interview with Tim Haines, creator of Favit for iPhone

TUAWFirst Look: Interview with Tim Haines, creator of Favit for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First look: Echofon for Mac beta version

Filed under: Software, First Look

Echofon (formerly TwitterFon) has been a favorite for many iPhone users for tweeting on the go. naan studio, the developers behind Echofon for iPhone and Firefox, have brought Echofon to the Mac with a newly-launched beta version.

Like Tweetie (which launched for iPhone and was later released for Mac) and other Twitter apps for Mac like Twitterrific and TweetDeck that started on the desktop, Echofon intends to provide tight integration with Twitter. Echofon is also aiming at integrating their new Mac offering with Echofon for iPhone.

Read on to see what Echofon for Mac offers…

Continue reading First look: Echofon for Mac beta version

TUAWFirst look: Echofon for Mac beta version originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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