I haven’t written a blog post in a month and a half. So it’s was about time I sorted it out! So I recorded an audio blog, an expanded Audioboo if you like. All about the projects I have been working on recently.
It’s just under 5 minutes long and you can download the MP3 if you like. Or put the RSS feed into iTunes (or another generic player) to receive it as a podcast :). I hope its not too boring!
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After attending the Twitter Developer Nest (which I recommend you attend), where I talked about FootyTweets (see my presentation here), there was a discussion about how the Twitter API handles user avatars.
The main problem is that the URL that is given in the API is a direct URL to the image. So if the user changes their image after your API call is done, you will get a broken image/404.
I have this problem with TwitterLeague and have to run a 30 minute update to check for users avatars. This also means that an avatar could be broken for up to 30 minutes. In Twitter land this is obviously a long time.
So Twavatars (twitter.com/twavatars) is my solution. Whenever you want to display a users avatar instead of doing an API call you instead use a Twavatar URL, this collects the relevant users image (depending on the size) and returns an image. This means the URL can be used directly in an <img>.
I am now back home on my birthday. Haven’t been here since Wednesday 29th April. Feels like weeks since I slept in my own bed!
But I did have an awesome time at the Twitter Developer Nest. I am briefly going to summarise the parts of the day that really got me thinking.
Zolty
The first presentation was by @zolty where he showed us BakerTweet and how he used an Arduino unit to create a tool that was installed at the Bakery over the road from his office. The unit sends out a tweet when a baker takes something out the overn, chooses the item on the unit and presses the send button.
It was a really great presentation and really opens up the number of opportunities for this unit. Zolty did mention that there is a unit being tested at London Zoo where a tweet will be sent out when an animal is being fed.
ME!
I spoke second and talked about my various Twitter apps but went on to talk in-depth about the FootyTweets Cease and Desist issues. I have included the presentation below.
Doug Williams
@dougw is part of the Twitter API team and focuses on support. He breifly went into some of the technical details into why there have been problems since Aston Kutcher and Oprah (with a lot of other factors) increased Twitters traffic exponentially.
He also answered a number of questions from the audience. There were a few issues that were raised including Twitter Avatars and syncing.
Paul Johnston
Paul (@PaulDJohnston) did a really interesting talk about Transient and Persinstant data on Twitter. It was quote in-depth and he went into how to best make use of Twitter avatars. I have embedded his presentation below.
Show & Tweet
After the main talks it was time for show and tweet, you have 140 seconds to talk about your app. I can only remember a couple of the demos so please accept my appologies if your app isn’t listed. Please tell me in the comments!
TweetMeme API
Peepwl
TweetRaffle (in development)
TwitApps
Then it was off to the pub! I did get to talk to a number of people and would really like to thank everyone there who talked to me but in particular @stut. We discussed Twitter apps and scaling for almost 2 hours and barely stopped for air!
The Twitter Developer Nest is a small event for current and prospective Twitter app developers, inspired by the Facebook Developer Garage. Essesntially the evening has a number of short talks, a networking session and then a trip to the pub after! This is taken from the official website twitterdevelopernest.com
The first event especially for the Twitter development community will take place on the evening of Tuesday 24th March at Sun Microsystem’s Customer Briefing Centre in London. The event will be developer centric with the content best suited to people who are already developing applications on top of Twitter or who intend to start building a Twitter application in the near future.
Even Twitter Co-founder, Biz Stone (@biz) thinks the idea is great:
We’re looking forward to the cool projects that will be hatched at the Twitter Developer Nest. The work coming out of the Twitter developer community is not only inspiring—it also creates important variety for users.
After the success of the first event there is now a second event on the 30th of April and tickets are £5 each. But the best bit is that I will be there doing a talk! My talk will be about developing a Twitter app on a budget and whats going on with FootyTweets.
Doug Williams (@dougw), Twitter Inc. - Twitter API Q&A
Paul Johnston (@PaulDJohnston), Vida - Transient v. Persistent Data on Twitter
Show & Tweet - 8 x 140 second demos - Reserve your spot on the night.
Food, Drink & Networking
The last section means that you can pop along and speak for 140 seconds about your Twitter development project or idea. Let me know if you are going to come along. Or if you have any questions. Don’t forget to follow the events twitter account @devnest! The event is also streamed on UStream.tv, you can see the last events clips on the UStream.tv page.
I have launched the site with this seasons Formula 1 in mind. So I have set up two leagues so far. F1 drivers championship and the F1 constructors championship. This means you can follow a combination of drivers and teams/constructors.
Soon there will be more motorsports added. Feel free to suggest other motorsports you’d like to see in the feedback forum.
Please check it out and let me know what you think.
At my office we are looking into getting 50 tablet PC’s for some of our teams to work “in the field”. As part of this we are getting lots of review units. So I have borrowed the Fujitsu Siemens ST6010 to review for you.
Specs:
Cost: £1500 ish
Hard drived: 80/120/160/250 GB or 64GB SSD
Processor: Core 2 Duo
RAM: 1GB or 2GB
Display: 1280 x 800 display (portrait)
Operating System: Windows XP
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G
Security: Impact detection and fingerprint recognition
After the amazing success of the h1debate Twitter hashtag poll. I decided to create another one for a slightly specialised topic. Do you love or hate marmite? Available at lovehatemarmite.com Obviously this is just available in the UK and South Africa.
So how does it work? Well if you have a Twitter account, simply tweet #lovemarmite or #hatemarmite along with your reason to vote! For more on Marmite check out the official site at marmite.co.uk.
There may well be more polls to come soon. Don’t forget to check out the h1debate.com
Paul Randall had some discussions on Twitter last week about where on a page you should use an h1 tag. There are 2 possible options. Either as the sites name for instance <h1>Acme labs</h1> or as the main heading <h1>About page</h1>.
This lead to Paul getting into a bigger discussion and finally approaching me (after our awesome collaboration on the design of FootyTweets) to help develop a site to integrate the Twitter discussion.
The site idea came at about 6:30pm yesterday (2nd Feb 2009) and was finished at 10:30pm ish the same day.
H1debate.com integrated Twitter hashtags and the Twitter Search API to create a voting system so there can finally be an outcome and settly once and for all the correct use of the <h1>.
As people who follow me on Twitter will know, I cracked my iPhone’s about 3 days before Christmas. I tried to replace the screen on my old iPhone and consequently broke the ariel meaning it immediately became an iPod touch! But this time I made sure I paid for insurance. So I took the my broken iPhone 3G to the Carphone Warehouse and they said it would be atleast 2 weeks to repair. I did point out that I think after the extortionate premium I pay that I should get a replacement. Instead they gave me a shitty Nokia that looked like it has a screen resolution of 100px x 100px! I was not impressed.
I got back to work with this shitty phone and immediate looked around for my old Windows Mobile phone that was locked to Orange and therefore spent the next hour finding out how to SIM unlock it. I succeded but during the process lost my 3G coverage. I then had to get it to sync with my contacts on my machine using Microsofts ActiveSync. I had to spend 40mins importing my Windows Contacts into Outlook (whihc I don’t use) just to get ActiveSync to see them! I was pretty much fuming at this point.
I then had to find a Twitter client for it. I ended up with Twobile. A nice little app that does everything you need, except it looks like it was a microsoft app i.e. broing to look at and took atleast 3 clicks to get to what I wanted.
Move on 3 weeks, I was walking down the high street and suddenly got a pain in my chest, it ended up being a Spontaneous Pneumothorax which at the time of writing I still have! But this meant for the next week I could not walk far without being in agony from my chest. So I couldn’t get to the shop to get my iPhone back.
Back to today (15th of January), I collected my iPhone and paid the £29.99 premium that clearly said 17.5 VAT (which is obviously wrong), I couldn’t be assed to argue over it. The guy then announced that it was a replacement handset, I could have told him they would do that 4 weeks ago! Instead I had to go back to the office and wait 5 hours till I could get home and sync the dam thing and get everything back to how it was.
Anyway I took a pic of what I got back:
A nice little box
A new (probably refurbished) iPhone
An official Apple paperclip
Anyway that is my story, my phone is still syncing (30mins so far). My recommendation: Do not drop your iPhone!
Hello! Welcome to 2009! I know we are already a few weeks in to the year but I have yet to say anything on my blog! I have been working on a few projects. I will be announcing them over the next few days and weeks.
As you can tell I have a new theme. The last theme was starting to look a bit cluttered so I opted for a new theme with a space to put some free text. That way I can keep everyone up to date with my latest prjects without directing them to a particular page
Anyway how was your new year celebrations? Mine was quite quiet really, just went to my girlfriends parents house for lots of drinks and food.
Welcome to my blog. Take a look around and visit it a few of my sites using the link below. I will try to keep my blog as up to date as I can. For information on websites and other work I have done please visit the projects page.
At my office we are looking into getting 50 tablet PC’s for some of our teams to work “in the field”. As part of this we are getting lots of review units. So I have borrowed the Fujitsu Siemens ST6010 to review for you.
