Tag Archives: Twitter

Tweeting without Twitter

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During my flight to WWDC this year I could not really sleep, and the 12 hour flight was the source of memorable tweets that will never make it to Twitter. Because of timing and context, and also because of the inexcusable lack of wifi network in some major airlines.

Anyway.

I used Pages during the flight to keep track of all those insomniac, bilingual tweets, while the plane was a going through the Atlantic and Canada towards San Francisco. Some are about the flight itself, others about the Argentine film “El Secreto de sus Ojos”, and finally some about the Football World Cup. Project yourself in the situation, and enjoy the rants. I certainly did :) Continue reading →

Discovering a Hidden iPhone URL Scheme

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As an iPhone developer, one of the simplest and easiest mechanisms you have to interact with other applications is through the use of iPhone URL Schemes. These are so important that I’ve created a wiki page where I keep track of those I come across, including code samples that help me exchange data with them.

xcode

However, not all editors document the URL schemes they support in their apps, and this blocks reuse and collaboration. I recently came into such a problem, trying to use TwitterFon from my own apps, to post messages to Twitter. The TwitterFon site only specifies the following iPhone URL scheme:

twitterfon:///post?this%20is%20a%20test

The problem is, this URL scheme does not perform an URL-decoding on the message parameter, which means that a phrase like “this is a test” will appear in TwitterFon URL-encoded, that is, as “this%20is%20a%20test”. Clearly not acceptable.

However, thanks to Ashley Mills, I learnt that the USA Today iPhone app is able to use TwitterFon to share articles via Twitter, and does this properly, without URL-encoded characters. How do they do that? Obviously, they are using an URL scheme exported by TwitterFon, but not documented anywhere (*). I finally discovered that the URL scheme sought is the following (“message” instead of “post”!):

twitterfon:///message?some%20text%20here

This is how I found out: I impersonated TwitterFon in my own iPhone with an ad-hoc app created in Xcode, that shows me the URL used by USA Today to launch TwitterFon. Continue reading →

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-11

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  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-19 http://bit.ly/uPdzt #
  • Nice weekend completely offline. I should've set up some autoresponders but… Here I am anyway. #
  • I've started reading "Beautiful Teams" (O'Reilly) yesterday http://url.akosma.com/47e302 great book so far. Similar to "Founders at Work". #
  • cette semaine: Paléo! @claukosma et moi on y va mardi (Julien Doré) et vendredi (Charlie Winston + Ska-P), et vous? #
  • Paleo iPhone application: http://url.akosma.com/s45658 awful (eeewww!) but useful. #
  • "Comprueban que decir malas palabras ayuda a tolerar el dolor" http://url.akosma.com/s9jn6r #lpmqlp #
  • "Toxic Love Shack" B52 vs. Britney Spears http://url.akosma.com/uwi6a8 #
  • public service message: the T-60 minutes before the Eagle touches the Moon! http://wechoosethemoon.org/ #
  • T-39 minutes for the moon landing on http://wechoosethemoon.org/ #
  • T-15 minutes for Moon landing at http://wechoosethemoon.org/ #
  • impressive http://wechoosethemoon.org/ #
  • A new day, a new iPhone app. #
  • just finished yet another iPhone app. Woooooot! #
  • This is the hottest train I've ever been in my life. Even the Retiro-Tigre in January was cooler. Geez. #
  • Just left Nyon Paléo Festival, INCREDIBLE Julien Doré! http://twitpic.com/b5f7k #
  • public service msg: wanna outsource Cocoa / iPhone in Argentina or Uruguay? Ask @cotlar @cigumo @devego @gabrielgm @gugote Great chaps! #
  • another public service msg: outsourcing your company e-mail to Google Apps for Businesses is a great business decision. Very happy with it! #
  • "o sorpresa / milagro de la naturaleza / sobre la mesa / he visto una milanesa / decorada con un carozo de cereza". Esssaaaa #
  • Going to a meeting for (you guessed it) yet another Earth-shattering iPhone app :) #
  • I wish there was an "umbrella" iPhone app, using the integrated force field generator to protect you. I forgot mine at home and wrath comes. #
  • "La ruuubia, taraaada, aburiiiida" esta justo enfrente mío. #Luca not dead. #
  • Wait wait wait… Where's the storm??? #
  • viewing live how little randomness there is inside rand() and random() #
  • Farfalle for lunch. Al pesto. With cheese. And bread. Not very "diet" but soooo good #
  • the Amélie soundtrack by Yann Tiersen is absolutely mind-blowing. I love it. #
  • testing my latest iPhone app and its integration with Twitterriffic #
  • thought: Y Combinator == microfinance VCs? Is there a similar model here in Europe? #
  • In a couple of year's time, with more RAM and CPU power, the iPhone OS will feature garbage collection. But it won't matter anymore. #
  • Actually I got so used to retain, release and the Clang static analyzer that I even skip garbage collection on my Mac apps, too. #
  • Who said the solar eclipse was not visible in Europe? Right now Lausanne is witnessing one, but instead of the moon is clouds. And hail. #
  • the iPhone simulator *should* include the "airport mode". Anyway, deploying to phone now. #
  • Today, yes: we got tickets for the Harry Potter film! #
  • the Harry Potter movie is… meh. A real "middle" movie, but without the thrill of ESB, quite boring actually. #
  • Keynote, 1password, Delicious Library: when the iPhone becomes accessory of the desktop experience, it changes everything. #
  • I still don't get why Google Latitude on the iPhone is a web app. Crappy user experience, and even my location is wrong. Weird. #
  • Just found out that Digicomp is offering iPhone SDK dev training! http://url.akosma.com/6eeb6g #

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Best WWDC Ever

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… and WWDC 2009 is finally over.

This year’s event has been nothing short of amazing; maybe because not only the technologies presented blew my mind, but also because I met and spent some time with incredible guys, and getting in touch with the right people changes everything. So, to all of you, many thanks: @cigumo, @dlpasco, @sophiestication, @davemark, @jeff_lamarche, @markuspalmanto, @serpah, @raminf, @geraudch, @ayasin, @octopus_prime, @pjay_, @2009wwdc and all the others, in and out of Twitter, like Julio from Guatemala, the guy from Adobe (met in the queue to the hotdogs in the beer bash of Yerba Buena gardens), Sandro (aka “The Crazy Swiss Guy” of the Stump the Experts session), etc, etc, etc… with whom we’ve shared laughs, ideas, emotion, friendship and beers.

WWDC is an inspiring event: listening to the above guys, or the conferences from Smule or ngmoco:) talking about their companies, and how they grew up the past year, all of that makes me think about this new path I’m taking right now:

akosma software is born. Expect a lot.

That Twitterriffic editor

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They say imitation is the best form of flattery. Well, here’s another attempt at doing that, after my “attack” on the Facebook iPhone app (decidedly I’m on a somewhat copying mood lately).

I use Twitterriffic a lot, both on the iPhone and on my Mac, and particularly in the iPhone version, I’ve always liked the little editor for tweets. It grows and shrinks as you type, it appears and disappears following the keyboard, and it provides a standard toolbar with many useful buttons (Actually, I wish the Mac version would have a similar text entry box, which would grow bigger as I type; it’s probably the only complaint I have about it!)

Well, here’s my own attempt at doing something similar, and after 1 hour of work, the result is published, ready for you to enjoy at Github. As usual, no strings attached, pure public domain stuff, so use it and play with it as you wish.

Modified version of Twitterlex

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I love Twitterlex. It’s a Mac OS X Dashboard widget, and the main interface I use to send tweets. However, I didn’t like the fact that it did not highlight links in the tweet list! So I created a modified version (without authorization from the author, mind you) that does just that!

twitterlex.png

For those interested, I modified the twitterlex.js file inside the widget, adding new functions beginning on line 146. You can download it from here! I repeat: I am not the original author of the code, just a shameless coder who likes to see how things work. Have fun!

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