TweetSuite WordPress Plugin + Ping.fm (Preview)

A couple weeks ago, I found out that Twitter had a Search feature that showed real-time tweets for a keyword. I gave it a little thought, considered what it would take to actually write the software – and then wised up, and decided to see if someone already did the hard work.

Sure enough, Dan Zarrella over at danzarrella.com had. He wrote one for Tweetbacks, and then expanded on it with TweetSuite. So I gave them a shot.

I started with Tweetbacks on the FreeformFrog.com Blog and everything seemed to be working fine – until one day when the Tweetbacks stopped. It just stopped finding them – even though I knew they were getting tweeted – because I was using Ping.fm to syndicate my blog posts to the appropriate social networks.

I gave it a couple weeks, and then decided I was going to fix it. I was tired of not having my TweetBacks working – especially during my efforts pushing a Social Networking campaign at job.

So, I added @danzarrella, and asked…

@danzarrella do you have plans to integrate ping.fm posting in TweetSuite? If not, mind if I take a crack at it?
from @neotsn at  from web

A few minutes later, I got a response…

@neotsn go to town
from @danzarrella at

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RTML Services for sale?

Well, I’ve added a WordPress plugin for e-commerce, but at the same time, I am also building two websites (one professionally, one as a hobby) using Yahoo Store’s RTML and Zen Cart, respectively.

However, with the downturn in the economy (and my slightly-better-than-arbitrary prediction of a <7,000 point stock market by the end of the month…Spring Break at the latest), I figure it’s time to start taking into consideration other possible sources of income. Not for fear of losing my job, but rather to help get my bills in check Credit Cards, primarily, who have decided it is time to raise the minimum payment – which is the only thing enabling me to devote a greater portion of my money to one in order to pay it off, while keeping the others at par until it is their turn. Continue reading

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Integrating Google Connect

I’ve been part of the Google Connect beta since shortly after it came out – but it wasn’t until recently that I actually implemented it on my blog and the parent site, www.thepizzy.net. So, if you read this (and I know there has to be at least 4 other people in the world that do), go ahead and hit the Join button on it, and let me know y’all are out there. (it helps to know one is writing to an audience instead of providing technical articles to the etherworld.)

You don’t have to worry about spam or anything – I don’t like it either.

In other news, I’m also working on a tutorial entry that describes how to get data from a Google Docs Spreadsheet. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about trying to release this code, but since it was such a pain for me to figure out (like the UT3 Server setup), I’m sure it’s a pain for others to figure out as well.

The code creates a secure-authenticated session to Google Accounts, and then requests the data from a particular cell on a spreadsheet. My code goes one step further though, and posts that data to Twitter – which means it also creates an authenticated POST request via the Twitter API.

“Why do that?’ you ask…Well, if you want to be able to update a spreadsheet from, say an iPhone or other Mobile Browser, Google Docs will not let you. But I’ll explain more in the coming entry. Be looking for that sometime this week (I hope).

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Update: New RSS Code in the works.

Earlier I posted on the RSS Code that I’m working on. I’ve done quite a bit of work on it so far – learning about the various functions that PHP offers. Most of what I thought I was learning while setting up the forums was not actually PHP’s functions, they were phpbb functions. And knowing the basis of the actual language is helping a lot.

I’ve gotten the posts and post data sync’d to the other database when posts are made, and right now I’m working on filtering out the BBCode that gets inserted into all the posts. I’ve so far gotten out the bold, underline, italics, and url codes. Next I have to figure out how I want to format the quote code so that it makes sense when it’s read in RSS. After I get a few more BBCodes filtered out, I’ll figure out what I want to do with the smilies, and then implement it into the site.

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New RSS Code in the works

After spending some time thinking about different ways to re-enable the RSS feature for the-spot.net, I’ve finally hit on an idea that I’ve started writing the code for.

The original code would hit the main database to grab the newest posts on the forums…after it sorted all 77000 posts by date, and then grabbed the top 15-20 of them and their data. Since the entire site runs off of that one database, you can imagine how that would slow down everything when even just 10 people hit the site every 15 minutes.

So I am going to attempt my first distributed database scenario. Continue reading

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