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Geeks seem to be very DIY kind of folks. I think it’s because we like to write our own code and do just about everything ourselves. There also seems to be a huge swing back towards doing things yourself, like doing your own home repairs, working on your car, building your own electronics, etc and I love it. I’ve always been drawn to tearing things apart and putting them back together again. I remember trying to build a radio to talk to astronauts when I was 8 or 9 years old. I failed miserably, but I think that’s because I used toys (Simon Says) as major components. That, and I have no idea how in the world to do any that sort of thing. The fine folks over at MAKE magazine have taken up the void left by shop teachers and every issue teaches you how to make something, so maybe one day I’ll be able to make that radio after all. In the mean time though, they’ve got a kick ass project that’s sold me on subscribing to the magazine: HOW TO - Make plants talk! They’ll Twitter you when they need to be watered (and more). I wonder what other wicked things we could adapt this kind of project for. Monitor the temperature in my house, monitor food temperature, fire or carbon monoxide detectors, man, the list could go on.

via Nicki

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, MAKE, DIY, Plants

Twittershare lets mac users and web users upload files and share them via Twitter. While html links have worked for some time now, other features like emebedding video, sending files and other media have been limited. Third party apps like this one make it possible. These features are common among Twitter’s competitors like Pownce, but they lack the robust SMS capabilities that Twitter has. I don’t use the SMS that much and most of the updates I see are from pc/mac clients or the web. Sure, during events its nice to have the SMS, but would the advanced features make Twitter more useful for what people are using it for: sharing things they find on the web? Regardless, there’s not shortage of cool little helper apps like Twittershare, which looks like one of the best.

via ReadWritWeb

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, TwitterShare, Twitter Tools

Everyone knows how horrible traffic gets during the daily commute. Compounding the issue is the lag time between updates from the radio stations who spend most of the air time playing 2-3 songs between sets of 10 commercials in a row. Not any more. At least not for us Twitter fans. Nicki has stumbled upon what is perhaps the coolest usage of Twitter I’ve seen yet: Commuter Feed. The service lets commuters like you and me keep up with traffic happenings in your metro area via twitter and you can also share what’s up with others in you’re area. It works just like most bots where you subscribe to their twitter account and then you just send it messages with the locale and traffic problem. Simple yet fantastic. Kudos! Now I just have to spread the word to people in my area about the service so that it’ll be useful to me!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Commuter Feed

There’s already plenty of sites snarfing down twitter feeds and providing search and other interested tools, but I think Twemes my be the first I’ve seen that tracks and organizes Tweets by topic, tag and meme. This could come in very handy when I’m looking for quotes or interesting bits on a subject I’m interested (most likely for blogging).

via Nicki

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twemes

Duncan left this tip today:

We are also developing some cool twitter features at viygo.com.

e.g http://www.viygo.com/twitter shows the current public timeline.

or

http://www.viygo.com/twitter/goldman shows a goldman’s most recent posts.

You can also embed these timelines on your own site or web page e.g.

http://duncanmeech.googlepages.com/twitterembeddedtimelines

Duncan’s tools are a great mashup, and I love the granular level at which you can view the Twitter timeline, including your own. It’s pretty slick.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Tools, Mashup, Timeline

Got a cool tip today:

Hi Guys, we just rolled out a new Twitter Stack flash widget. Check it out.

The Twitter Stack is a cool way to display twitter messages in a 3D Space on MySpace, Facebook, or any other website. The widget is built using the ActionScript 3.0 Stack component. The experience of using the widget is like traveling through time! Anyhow, check it out and let us know what you think. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to post it all over the internet!

Advanced Flash Components offers a variety of cool flash widgets that are worth having a look at.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Widget

Starling is at the core of what we do at Twitter; it moves small messages around to daemons that work on jobs like processing updates, delivering messages, archiving user accounts, and so forth. An asynchronous messaging solution is becoming a necessity for big web applications, and Starling fits the particular needs we have at Twitter. It’s fast, it’s stable, it speaks the memcache protocol so it doesn’t need a new client library, and it’s disk-backed for persistence. When other parts of the Twitter site go down, Starling stays up. It’s a champ, and we love it.

Until now, Starling has lived a sheltered life in the Twitter code base. We’re happy to announce that Starling is now open source and freely available for anyone to use, modify, and improve. We’re eager to see patches and to start a proper open source community around Starling.

Twitter has released part of the code that makes what they do possible. This is well beyond just giving people access to your API. I’ve speculated that Twitter would make a great platform model and maybe this is a step in that direction, or maybe by releasing this the open source community can build on and expand it’s features and everyone wins Whatever the case, this is an interesting move.

Via dev.twitter.com

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Code, Twitter Source, Starling

Jason Calacanis just posted about a new tool from Mahalo, currently in beta, that will let you post links to Mahalo, ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, tumblr, google and jaiku. I suspect more will come as well. I’ve been beta testing it for a week or so already, getting the inside scoop from Jason on Twitter. This is a pretty cool app and I suggest giving it a shot, especially for anyone who collects links like I do. It’ll save you a lot of time posting it to all the various social bookmarking sites. I’ve just started dabbling in submitting links to Mahalo but I’m liking the process pretty well. Unlike previous attempts at a human powered (directory), dmoz.org, Mahalo seems free of the corruption that plagues dmoz to this day, along with the weeks, or months it takes to wait to get denied.

Give the plugin a try here: Mahalo Follow.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Mahalo, Jaiku, del.ici.us, tumblr, ma.gnolia

I’m sure you’ve seen me talk about wanting a client that manages most of my social network. Most of them have APIs, so why not? Finally, someone’s put together an IM style client that notifies you of updates, lets you manage friends, media, links, feeds… the whole ball of wax. Here is a video tour straight from 8hands, check this out:

The 8hands Video Tour from 8hands on Vimeo.

This is extremely cool. I’m installing it now

via download squaid via nicki

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Clients, 8hands

Damon posted a comment on the Twitter Stats post where I pointed out his excellent perl script. Damon’s project also inspired a version of Twitter Stats Using Ruby and a Web Based version, which is pretty cool. He also mentions he’s wanting to get his up on the web too.

Quick reference to Damon’s original perl script.

Anyone seen a php one? If not, please don’t tell me I have to write it, or I just might!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Twitter Hacks, Twitter Stats, Perl, Ruby