Nicholas Pike

Just a sneak peak at the latest feature to MobileTwitter… update coming soon once I can get some testing and tuning done.

• Messages view now lets you view Replies and Direct Messages.
• Keyboard and Send button swapped on the UpdateView.
• All Twitter requests should be made over HTTPS now.

MobileTwitter has been “released” to the public for a few days now – I’ve had to release two major fixes, and two minor fixes (1.1, 1.2 – 1.21, 1.22).

I would like to thank everyone for the feedback I have received so far, the coming week will be very busy for me so the next major version (1.5) of MobileTwitter may be a few days off.

I anticipate one or two more minor releases until then (one coming soon to move the Send button and keyboard on the Update View).

What can you look forward to for MobileTwitter 1.5?

Features to come…

• TwitPic.com integration
• Manual refresh
• Offline storage of recent tweets
• Replies view
• Staring/Favoring Tweets
• Better Chinese character support..
• Bug fixes for tweets that don’t fit in their box..
• Landscape mode for Update view

Bolded features are things that are priorities for me – and the other “primary” user of this application.  Italicized features are features that I will work on, but am not sure will make it for this version.

MobileTwitter 1.21 is available via my private repository or manually here.

This build contains some bug fixes and optimzations:

• Should now be able to correctly enter numbers in your username and password
• Application file size decreased
• Loading dialog will dismiss if there was an error connecting to Twitter

There’s all sorts of automated twitter posting now adays – you see it a lot for “new blog posts”, but not once have I seen a Twitter/Last.FM post.

For some reason I wrote this last night (even though there is no free time in my schedule at all lately) – as a quick exercise in using Ruby.

Once the script is run, it will suck down my Last.FM recently loved feed every 5 minutes – if the last song loved has changed, then it posts the name of the song, and the Last.FM url to my Twitter account (so that folks can listen to the song too)

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# @author:  Nicholas Pike - npike@npike.net
require 'net/http'
require 'rexml/document'

# Twitter account information
TW_USER = 'twitterusername'
TW_PASS = 'twitterpassowrd'
# Last.fm username
LF_USER = "lastfmuseraname"

# DO NOT CHANGE BELOW THIS
TW_URL  = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml'
LAST_FM_URL = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/#{LF_USER}/recentlovedtracks.xml"

# temp variables
last_url = ""
first_run = 1

def postToTwitter(message)
  begin
    url = URI.parse(TW_URL)
    req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(url.path)
    req.basic_auth TW_USER, TW_PASS
    req.set_form_data({'status' => message})
    begin
      res = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port).start {|http| http.request(req) }
      case res
        when Net::HTTPSuccess, Net::HTTPRedirection
          if res.body.empty?
            puts "Twitter is not responding properly"

          else
            puts 'Twitter update succeeded'

          end
        else
          puts 'Twitter update failed for an unknown reason'
          # res.error!

        end
    rescue
      puts $!
      #puts "Twitter update failed - check username/password"

    end
  rescue SocketError
    puts "Twitter is currently unavailable"

  end
end

while true

# get the XML data as a string
xml_data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(LAST_FM_URL)).body
doc = REXML::Document.new(xml_data)

if ( doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/url"].text != last_url)
   puts "No match"

   last_url = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/url"].text
   last_artist = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/artist"].text
   last_name = doc.elements["recentlovedtracks/track[1]/name"].text 

   message = "Last.FM: #{last_name} - #{last_artist}\n\n#{last_url}"

  # Dont send a twitter message on first run of script
   if (first_run != 1)
     postToTwitter(message)
   end
   first_run = 0
else
  puts "No change"
end
sleep 200
end

Its fixed, I think.

I’ll fix it in a few hours… this is what I get for playing around…

I just added MobileTwitter 1.0 to my private Installer.app repository (I grow tired of waiting for the apps to appear in the Community Sources repo).

Simply add my repo to your installer.app:

1. Open Installer.app
2. Click Sources
3. Click Edit
4. Click add
5. Type:  http://apps.npike.net/repo.xml
6. Click OK
7. Refresh sources
8. Relaunch Installer.app
9. MobileTwitter will now appear under the NPike category.  Enjoy!

For those of you interested, and not yet aware:  after four weeks of waiting to hear from my Microsoft recruiter I finally got fed up and emailed the lady that setup my phone interview.

The next day I received my “Dear John” rejection letter.

What really gets me, is that it took me sending them an email asking what the deal with the delay was, to get a response.  The lady apologized saying “this definitely isn’t our policy”.  Funny, this is the same thing that happened to me the last time I interviewed with Microsoft – but they didn’t even send me the rejection letter then, so I guess their “policy” has improved somewhat.

Back to the drawing board in regards to full time employment after graduation…  anyone out there looking for a creative, determined, charming, problem-solving, solution-creating, more buzz words here, software engineer with a BS in computer science?

… look at all these creative projects that I have accomplished in my free time.

Your loss Microsoft – I’ll be seeing you around.

I am at about 80% completed (all major features done, just bug fixes and usability enhancements).

Some new screenshots:

(your feed + followers)

(When you tap a tweet, this is the action menu you get)