What happened to the Dallas Stars Twitter? They removed me from their friend list, and changed everything!
If you’re asking yourself that question…it’s not what you think. Here’s what happened – it was all a mistake…
Back in the Fall of 2007, @winkydo had an idea to start broadcasting the scores during the Dallas Stars NHL hockey games. Continue reading
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 4:32 PM Mar 18th from web
A few minutes later, I got a response…
@neotsn go to town
from @danzarrella at
Well, last night was about the 7th time I’d been messaged by a salmon-themed screenname. The first time I was messaged, I asked if they were a bot, and got a response. However, since I have used the TrillAlice plugin before for Trillian, I knew that just because it responded with simple, yet pertinent answers, doesn’t mean it’s not a bot on the other end.
So, after the first time, I replied with something ridiculous, usually “I want your body…in my mouth.” and then blocked the user, and closed the window… Continue reading
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).
With a new My Spot page comes new possibilities. This time around, I’m going to make a concerted effort to actually write in new code and attach a new database backend that pulls from the phpbb database and the users’ accounts on the-spot.net.With this new plan, there will be increased ability to add features and remove features on the user-level…that is to say, you can choose what you want to see on the page.
There will also be some integration to popular social sites right on the My Spot page, like twitter and flickr – community based sites with an API that doesn’t require you to visit their site in order to view content.
Last night, I worked with the twitter.com API and with the RSS reader that I’ve hacked up in PHP, and turned out the twitter stream for the-spot.net’s twitter friends. That will go on the front page of the My Spot page so that everyone on tsn can know what all the other tsn members are twittering about.
The next thing I’m going to be doing with that is working on a way to allow the users to update their twitter status directly from tsn. That’s going to take a bit more work than displaying the feed, but it will be a good challenge.
On the previous version of the site, there was a flickr flash app that showed the new photos from the tsn flickr group. That will be coming back as well.
I’m also going to try to make the User Control Panel more accessible and integrate the Buddy List into the My Spot page so you can see when your favorite posters are online (since the information box at the bottom displays the last X minutes, and not “Currently” online).
I’m still trying to gather new ideas from everyone about what they’d like to see on the page…and I hope to make it modular like that previous My Spot page was so they can just be plugged in to the template based on information in the new database determining whether or not they wish to see that.
if you have any ideas – leave comments, or message me directly.
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Tags: the-spot.net, tsn7, my spot, flickr, twitter, api, programming, hacking, rss, php, tsn, community, integration, mashup