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…

The Backstory…

Back in the Fall of 2007, @winkydo had an idea to start broadcasting the scores during the Dallas Stars NHL hockey games. So he went to register the account for @DallasStars and from then on, he and I (@neotsn) were all about posting updates, tying in news feeds. Our updates got pretty complicated using a 1400-character if-statement to parse a collection of inputs and derived values from a database of all the NHL players, their numbers and their teams. We’d watch every game, intently focused on a 52″ Plasma HD TV so that we could see which players scored, which assissted, and get all the stats up on the internet before the official NHL Game Stats page was updated – and often before the announcers could say.

Well, that lasted all the way until the end of 2008-09 Season.

We got a message from @cfaulk, asking who was behind the @DallasStars, but because we had hidden who was behind the account, and had a policy never to reply, opinionate, or follow people with that account, we did not respond. Unfortunately, the means that @cfaulk couldn’t find us to contact us.

Why does it matter that @cfaulk couldn’t find us? Because he’s the Sr. VP of Ticket Sales for the @DallasStars, Sr. Acct Executive for the Texas Rangers, and the Acct Executive for the Dallas Burn.

What happened…

Well, while the Dallas Stars organization was trying to get information from Twitter Co. about who was running the site, they created @TheDallasStars to start their feed. All they wanted to do was ask us to remove the word “Official” from our description since there was truely an Official feed out there.

…But they never got a response from the Twitter people.

Meanwhile, I saw the advertisement on Facebook for @TheDallasStars as the “Official” Twitter feed for the Dallas Stars, and made a comment advertising the one we set up. Then I went to look into the DallasStars.com website, and in their Fan Zone menu, and pulled up their Official Facebook Fanpage – it was the same one. So then I went back to figure out who it was that asked the @DallasStars who they were, and found it was @cfaulk and found him on LinkedIn, figured out who he was there, and asked him to confirm it. He responded asking who I was, and I gave him my contact info, explained how we were using the @DallasStars profile, but didn’t hear anything back

Then, today…

When @cfaulk and company logged into their Twitter account, they noticed that all-the-sudden, the account they registered (@TheDallasStars) was now simply @DallasStars. So I got an email from @cfaulk asking to talk to us. I went and looked at the @DallasStars page to find out it had been suspended as @DallasStars_I. So we were concerned too, because we had hoped we could transfer the fanbase to the NHL Organization by simply turning over the account credentials to the Dallas Stars Organization, as well as the infrastructure we had developed…and possibly work out some kind of contract-labor situation where we could keep maintaining it for them.

This evening there was a conference call placed between @winkydo, @cfaulk, @shickdog (Sr. Dir. of Communications) and myself (@neotsn). During our conversation, we discovered that @cfaulk & @shickdog thought we ditched the account; and @winkydo and I thought they had acquired the account. But apparently Twitter did it on their own accord, probably to reduce mitigation, and just hand over the account to the copyright holder.

We were all disappointed by this because we lost the fanbase we had gained over the 1.5 seasons of tweeting. However, that’s part of the fun – and we still have 2400 (of the 2538 followers) emails telling us who is following. So we can re-add everyone as time goes by, a couple each day so we don’t get banned for adding disproportionate amounts of followers.

Essentially all they wanted to get in touch with us for was to ask us to remove the “Official” verbiage from the description on our page. They were happy that we had such enthusiasm and wanted to remain in touch, since they were just getting started in all of this social networking, and we were able to acquire the fans without their media presence.

Here’s The Breakdown…

Now we have new accounts set up, and they all have purposes, and @winkydo and I are going to be working closely with @cfaulk & @shickdog to get all this up and running again. At least, that’s the hope I think everyone had when we ended the conference call.

Here’s the twitter accounts that came out of it, and what they are:

• @DallasStars – The Official Dallas Stars Twitter account (formerly @thedallasstars)
  • Follow this acct to get Official News from the Dallas Stars Organization
  • Updated and maintained by the Dallas Stars NHL Organization’s Communications Department
• @TheDallasStars – The Fan-version Dallas Stars Twitter account (formerly @dallasstars)
  • Follow this acct to get most of the Official News, the Popular Stars Blogs, and Live Scores
  • Yes, we did clear it with @cfaulk that it would be OK with them to re-register @thedallasstars since they had our original page.
  • Updated and maintained by @winkydo and @neotsn, with Live Scores and News feeds just like before. The same Dallas Stars feed/speed you loved for the past 2 seasons, but this time, you know who’s doing it.
• @DallasStarsLive – A new Fan-version of the Dallas Stars Twitter account
  • This is ONLY Live Scores updated during the games by @winkydo and @neotsn.

Please ReTweet this, and tell all your friends about this change – so everyone can hit the ground running next season!

Technorati Tags: cfaulk, dallas stars, dallas stars twitter, dallasstars, neotsn, shickdog, thedallasstars, twitter, winkydo

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 4:34 PM Mar 18th from TweetDeck in reply to neotsn

Excellent…now I had his blessing to hack his codes. And so I have…

The download is coming soon

I have to get my Ping.fm API Key approved before anyone but me can install the plugin.

And now I present to you a general overview of what I wanted to accomplish, and how I did it. (Please note, this is a GENERAL overview with some examples – it’s not meant to be a how-to, so don’t try to just copy/paste the samples – there is much more to do than can be explained here). Let’s get started…

Objectives…

1. Make it post through Ping.fm – I syndicate all my stuff through twitterfeed.com and it pushes everything out through Ping.fm for me. Upon further investigation, I noticed that TweetSuite used its own publishing code to push out the updates – after it created its own shortened urls and attached them. So of course it would never find my updates – it didn’t know what urls to search for, because it didn’t create them.
2. Make it find my tweets that were pushed through Ping.fm – After realizing that it stopped searching for blog titles and started searching for the shortened urls as the unique identifier on the web, I realized that I needed it to create my urls and push them out with my Ping.fm update text. That was the only way to let TweetSuite know that there were tweets out there about my blog, and obtw here’s the link.
3. Clean up some of the things that were a little messy – Once I got poking around in the code, I noticed that it some parts of it were written a little redundantly, and in order for me to maintain understanding of what was going on, I needed to clean it up a little.

Let’s Code…

Well, for starters, to accomplish #1, I had to write a function that would validate the user’s app key with Ping.fm:
{code type=php}
/* [[Neo]] */
//BEGIN Ping.fm functions
function pingfm_verify() {
// request app key verification
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, ‘http://api.ping.fm/v1/user.validate’);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, Array(
‘api_key’ => get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_api_key’),
‘user_app_key’ => get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’)
));
$output = curl_exec($ch);
// update database with response
if (preg_match(‘/OK/’, $output)) {
echo ‘ <strong>Your key has been verified.</strong> Your can now post to your
<a href=”http://www.ping.fm” target=”_blank”>Ping.fm</a> account.’;
update_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified’, 1);
} else {
echo (‘<strong>Your key could not be verified.</strong>.’);
update_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified’, 0);
return false;
}
}

// END Ping.fm Functions
{/code}
Just your basic curl function to contact http://api.ping.fm/v1/user.validate and pass the api_key and user_app_key to the api, per the API Documentation on user.validate. Depending on the response, store it to the database, and display the appropriate message.

Next, I had to implement the fields to make that happen. We’ll start with the database…
{code type=php}
/* [[Neo]] */
//ADDED:
add_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_api_key’,’333333333333333333333333333333333′);
add_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’,”);
add_option(‘tweetsuite_use_ping’,0);
add_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified’,0);
//END ADD
{/code}
This sticks those fields into the wordpress database table “wp_options” where all the config values go. My developer’s api key, a blank user application key, a field for the checkbox “Do you want to use Ping.fm?” and one for whether or not the user_app_key successfully verified.

Then I create the user interface for those fields (as well as rearrange the rest of the fields since these have to flow right to make sense…
{code type=php}
/* [[Neo]] */
//ADDED:
update_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’, $_POST['tweetsuite_ping_app_key']);
//END ADD

//tweetsuite_use_ping
($_POST['tweetsuite_use_ping']) ? update_option(‘tweetsuite_use_ping’, 1) : update_option(‘tweetsuite_use_ping’, 0);
{/code}

That part allows the database to be updated with the data from the fields below…
{code type=html}
<!– /* [[Neo]] */ –>
<!– BEGIN ADD –>
<tr valign=”top”>
<th scope=”row”>Ping.fm :: Use Ping.fm to publish new posts (via your default method)?:</th>
<td><INPUT TYPE=CHECKBOX NAME=”tweetsuite_use_ping” <?php if(get_option(‘tweetsuite_use_ping’)) { echo “checked”; } ?>>
<br /><b>["Send a Tweet when you publish" is required for this to work]</b>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign=”top”>
<th scope=”row”>Ping.fm :: Your Ping.fm <a href=”http://ping.fm/key/” target=”_blank”>Application Key</a>:</th>
<td><INPUT TYPE=text NAME=”tweetsuite_ping_app_key” value=’<?php echo get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’); ?>’ /><br /><?php if(get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’)) { echo pingfm_verify(); } ?>
</td>
</tr>
<!– END ADD –>
{/code}
This is below the checkbox for “Send a Tweet when you publish a post?”…if that is checked, then if you check “Use Ping.fm to publish new posts (via your default method)?” and fill out the next field for “Your Ping.fm Application Key” then it will send your post details on Publish through Ping.fm instead of Twitter itself, appending the tinyurl associated with the post to your Ping.fm message. All this is done by editing the function that sends the tweets…
{code type=php}
function tweetsuite_send($msg) {
/* [[Neo]] */
//REMOVED:
//$prefix = urlencode(get_option(‘tweetsuite_prefix’).’ ‘);
//REPLACED:
$prefix = (get_option(tweetsuite_use_ping) and get_option(tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified)) ? get_option(‘tweetsuite_prefix’).’ ‘ : urlencode(get_option(‘tweetsuite_prefix’).’ ‘);
$msg = $prefix.$msg;

/* [[Neo]] */
//ADDED
if(get_option(tweetsuite_use_ping) and get_option(tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified)) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, ‘http://api.ping.fm/v1/user.post’);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, Array(
‘api_key’ => get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_api_key’),
‘user_app_key’ => get_option(‘tweetsuite_ping_app_key’),
‘post_method’ => “default”,
‘body’ => $msg)
);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
} else {
//END ADD
$username = get_option(‘tweetsuite_twitter_username’);
$password = get_option(‘tweetsuite_twitter_password’);
if(($username) and ($password)) {
$url = ‘http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml’;
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, “$url”);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “status=$msg”);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, “$username:$password”);
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
}
/* [[Neo]] */
//ADDED
}
//END ADD
}
{/code}
This starts off by swapping out the original urlencode() function for a conditional statement deciding if this is a ping.fm post or a twitter post. If it’s a ping.fm post, then we don’t want to urlencode() the prefix, because it sticks + signs where there should be spaces in the prefix to the title. However, if we don’t want to use ping.fm, then don’t mess with the original code.

Following that, it splits which method we used to post, based on the same criteria – make sure the checkbox is true for “tweetsuite_use_ping” and that the user’s app key is verified in “tweetsuite_ping_keyVerified”. If that’s the case, then post it through ping.fm – if any of that is not met, then go ahead and try to post it through twitter. If there is no username and password supplied on the options page, then we just won’t post anything.

Now…about the whole $msg – that part got skipped in the logic of everything. This was the tricky part, for me. Originally, I stumbled across an API Documentation page for the ping.fm method “url.shorten” and that was the very thing I needed – something to grab a ping.fm url, without passing it through ping.fm yet. However, I found out, after much frustration, that this method was mysteriously “depreciated” (which should be read as “edited off the page, and 404′d when you try to use it). But, I found another solution in the knowledgebase at Ping.fm…
{code type=php}
function ts_send_tweet($postID) {
global $wpdb;
if(!is_int($postID))
$postID = $postID->ID;

$table_name = $wpdb->prefix . “shorturls”;
$line = $wpdb->get_row(“select * from $table_name where postID=$postID”);
if($line->postID==$postID) {
/* [[Neo]] */
// ADDED: “*”.
$shorturl = “*”.$line->tinyurl;
$post = get_post($postID);
if(get_option(‘tweetsuite_send_posts’))
tweetsuite_send(trim($post->post_title).’ ‘.$shorturl);
}
}
{/code}
The article said you can prepend a * to the front of a url and it would not shorten it (in addition to the fact that they said they wouldn’t re-shorten any URLs 24 characters or smaller). So, I went with the * solution, because we’re already providing short URLs, but don’t want to risk the functionality in future updates to allow for custom url shortening services.

And that accomplishes both #1 and #2. We have the TweetSuite posting its updates through the Ping.fm API, and pushing a shortened url out with the post. TweetSuite then becomes aware of this url at publish, and stores it in its database. Then the cron job that runs every 5 minutes searches on any version of the URL that was stored and pulls back all the entries from the search.twitter.com Atom feed – parses them, and updates the database with them.

The rest of the stuff I did in the plugin was merely cleaning up…for example, reading the shortened urls from the Atom feed. The original code was:
{code type=php}
if(stristr($tweet, ‘http://bit.ly’)) {
if(strstr($tweet, $bitly)) {
$add = true;
} else {
$add = false;
}
}
{/code}
Because the urls are using alphanumeric sequences to track what link is what – and the url’s are case-sensitive, it was returning links that were not related to the post. For example, I got someone’s tweet about Rush Limbaugh because the bit.ly url (“http://bit.ly/fyhz”)was the same letters, but in a different case then my original “http://bit.ly/FyhZ”. So I changed the order of the search, did it for all the services currently supported, and cleaned up the code a little:
{code type=php}…
if(strstr($tweet, ‘http://bit.ly’)) { $add = (stristr($tweet, $bitly)) ? true : false; } else {
…
{/code}
The function strstr() is not case-sensitive, and that’s ok for a search on the domain name – we want anything that looks close to “bit.ly” to return positive. However, once it does, it’s imperitive that we use the case-sensitive stristr() function to return a positive result only if the full url matches what we have in the database case-for-case.

Wrapping up…

I made a couple more additions to the code beyond that, some of them required for functionality, some of them for cosmetics. I’ve submitted my plugin version to Ping.fm to approve it, and take my Developer’s Key out of “Pending” status. Once that’s done, I’ll send it off to Dan Zarrella to take a look and see how he wants to move forward. Then I’ll be able to post the plugin for download (definitely here, but also on the WordPress Plugin directory.

Continuing on…

I have read through the comments on Dan’s blog from the people, and have taken note of the things that they are asking for. After reading the code, he had already been working on some of the features. There are 5 main ones that people are asking for, and I’ve already done one of them in this release:

1. TweetThis link opens in a new window.
2. AutoUpgrade via WordPress Plugin Directory
3. Allow customized URL Shortening Services
4. TweetThis links for pre-installation posts
5. TweetThis links on the home page.

I’ll be looking more into the other options and see what I can do.

One More Thing…

This post was syndicated through the TweetSuite + Ping.fm plugin .

Technorati Tags: beta, dan zarrella, database, internet, MySQL, PHP, Ping.fm, site, syndication, tweetbacks, TweetSuite, twitter, WordPress

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…

creepysalmon: Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
creepysalmon: who the hell art thou?
creepysalmon: [[Neo]]?
[[Neo]]: ?
[[Neo]]: creepysalmon: Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
[[Neo]]: Auto-response sent to creepysalmon: Away since 6:54PM (GMT-6)
[[Neo]]: creepysalmon: who the hell art thou?
[[Neo]]: creepysalmon: [[Neo]]?
[[Neo]]: you started this…who are you?
creepysalmon: Looks like bots have gotten into Yahoo.
creepysalmon: Ah…
creepysalmon: it’s a bot.
[[Neo]]: yeah
creepysalmon: our apologies.
[[Neo]]: np
creepysalmon: [[Neo]]: WE verily miss you. Dost thou ever think about the good times?
creepysalmon: how very droll!

Until last night, when I decided to await a response…

liberatedsalmon: I may be a robot, but if you say ‘domo arigato’ to me, I will hurt you.
[[Neo]]: domo arigato, beeyotch
[[Neo]]: I want your body…
[[Neo]]: in my mouth
liberatedsalmon: huh?
liberatedsalmon: http://[spamwebsite]/debtfree
[[Neo]]: only if you get in my mouth
liberatedsalmon: you first
[[Neo]]: so how come you’re creating all these *salmon screennames? do people really click your links?
liberatedsalmon: huh?
[[Neo]]: how much of this conversation are you actually participating in?
[[Neo]]: on my end, you initiated it
liberatedsalmon: wierd
[[Neo]]: liberatedsalmon: I may be a robot, but if you say ‘domo arigato’ to me, I will hurt you.
[[Neo]]: [[Neo]]: domo arigato, beeyotch
[[Neo]]: [[Neo]]: I want your body…
[[Neo]]: [[Neo]]: …in my mouth
[[Neo]]: liberatedsalmon: huh?
[[Neo]]: liberatedsalmon: http://[spamwebsite]/debtfree
[[Neo]]: [[Neo]]: only if you get in my mouth
liberatedsalmon: you im’d me
[[Neo]]: what was my first sentence?
[[Neo]]: was it what I just sent you?
liberatedsalmon: thats what poped up on my screen
liberatedsalmon: you said lets play desert bus together.
[[Neo]]: can you copy the chat log from the beginning few lines, and send it to me?
liberatedsalmon: my nic isnt salmon anything .. your’s is allergenicsalmon though
[[Neo]]: interesting…I bet someone grabbed our screennames, and is proxying them to other people
[[Neo]]: my real one is “[[Neo]]”
liberatedsalmon: allergenicsalmon: Let’s play Desert Bus together! M.R.: huh?
liberatedsalmon: mine’s M.R.
[[Neo]]: hmm…this is not the first time I’ve had a salmon derivative IM me
[[Neo]]: talking about seeing things in the clouds, or if I liked puppy dogs
[[Neo]]: http://profiles.yahoo.com/liberatedsalmon
[[Neo]]: I wonder what ProjectU is, according to that profile
liberatedsalmon: who knows
[[Neo]]: I’m investigating further…I’ll let you go since neither one of us started this conversation…maybe it’s an elaborate scheme to get people to meet people online :-p
liberatedsalmon: hehe
liberatedsalmon: definalty wierd
liberatedsalmon: i’d say it was a hack attempt but i didnt get any links to click on
[[Neo]]: I got one from you
liberatedsalmon: unless there’s an exploitable bug in the new yahoo IM
[[Neo]]: but I am not even using Yahoo Messenger
liberatedsalmon: i usually use trillian
liberatedsalmon: but i got yahoo messenger last week to test some web bits.
[[Neo]]: it has to be something inside the protocol for yahoo messenger…if I had to guess, I’d say someone set up a Jabber/XMPP that connected to the yahoo IM service, and was using fake names to initiate connections to gleamed sn’s
[[Neo]]: I do too…Trillian Astra
liberatedsalmon: i wonder if it has anything to do with the yahoobox you can add to your website
[[Neo]]: that thought kinda makes me interested in setting one up, just to try it, and solve the question that’s floating around the internet
[[Neo]]: probably not…at least not on my end – I don’t do hardly anything with yahoo and this screenname
[[Neo]]: I have to use it for work, but that has a different acct tied to it
liberatedsalmon: well good luck!
[[Neo]]: thanks

After working out that neither of us started this conversation, I was able to surmise that it was either:

• an exploit in the Yahoo Instant Message delivery protocol, using the OpenSource Jabber/XMPP protocol, since one doesn’t have to be on another’s buddy list in order to contact them. or…
• a non-malicious social experiment to connect people with other people on the internet.

Well, my estimations and predictions weren’t too far off.

Last night I went searching for salmon screennames and ProjectU, and came across @mjlambie‘s twitter page, and his post made in January about the liberatedsalmon screenname, and left a message. This afternoon, I find a response from him mentioning Project Upstream. A couple click-arounds, and I come across a LiveJournal page that describes the project, in vague detail. A couple more clicks, and you can find more details about it.

Essentially, from the comments on the LiveJournal page…

“…Project Upstream was trying to identify the open minded people who would be willing to swim against the stream and chat with the random strangers with whom they were connected.”

“The world honestly needs more ways to reach out and meet each other. Connecting people randomly should be an every day occurrence. I can wait to see who I get paired up with next.”

…the project is to connect random people on the internet, all part of a larger project/idea called “The Great Hatsby“. Fortunately, they have included a command that you can send to stop receiving random connections to your screenname: “$optout”. Just send it to any of the spamfish and it will remove you from their list.

So there you have it, hope that helps get you started for finding out why you’re getting these messages from allergenicsalmon, liberatedsalmon, creepysalmon, or any other *salmon-derivative.

Update: Since the original posting of this article, over 1.5 years ago, The Great Hatsby wikipedia page has been removed from the site. The article detailed how a similar project was done on the AOL Instant Messaging platform using trout-derivative screennames.

Technorati Tags: aclockworkcoho, allergenicsalmon, AutomatedCoho, creepysalmon, Disorderlysalmon, excelletsalmon, foreignsalmon, glorioussalmon, google, liberatedsalmon, NanoScaleCoho, paradoxicalsalmon, profiles, project, ProjectU, ProjectUpstream, salmon, TalkativeCoho, The Great Hatsby, tickingsalmon, twitter, WoolenCoho

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).

Technorati Tags: api, beta, blog, Connect, google, server, site, Technology, ThePizzy, twitter, ut3

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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