Steve Reynolds Blog » ezTweet http://www.reynoldsftw.com Being Generalist. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 cURL on GoDaddy issue… http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:42:55 +0000 Steve Reynolds http://www.reynoldsftw.com/?p=62 ezTweet I came across a problem with my implementation of cURL updating my status using the Twitter API. It worked fine on all of my other hosting environments and dev environment... I was stumped... After some Google searching I found out that using cURL to access secure destinations required a proxy implementation, however GoDaddy seem to suggest now that this is no longer needed. So - was it my code? Odd that it would work elsewhere though... I tried all sorts of stuff, but eventually found the problem. Originally I had the following in my cURL statements: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml?status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat)));[/sourcecode] Turns out, GoDaddy is not a fan of this implementation... Like I said, it works, Twitter do accept it - however GoDaddy for whatever reason stopped it. The Twitter API documentation states it does require a POST, so I re-jigged the code to the following: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml"; curl_setopt($this->ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat))));[/sourcecode] Hey presto! All working! :) Would love someone a bit more technical to explain why the previous version worked elsewhere except GoDaddy... Please :D ]]> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/feed/ 1 3 shortcomings of Twitter http://www.reynoldsftw.com Being Generalist. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Steve Reynolds Blog » ezTweet http://www.reynoldsftw.com Being Generalist. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 cURL on GoDaddy issue… http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:42:55 +0000 Steve Reynolds http://www.reynoldsftw.com/?p=62 ezTweet I came across a problem with my implementation of cURL updating my status using the Twitter API. It worked fine on all of my other hosting environments and dev environment... I was stumped... After some Google searching I found out that using cURL to access secure destinations required a proxy implementation, however GoDaddy seem to suggest now that this is no longer needed. So - was it my code? Odd that it would work elsewhere though... I tried all sorts of stuff, but eventually found the problem. Originally I had the following in my cURL statements: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml?status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat)));[/sourcecode] Turns out, GoDaddy is not a fan of this implementation... Like I said, it works, Twitter do accept it - however GoDaddy for whatever reason stopped it. The Twitter API documentation states it does require a POST, so I re-jigged the code to the following: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml"; curl_setopt($this->ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat))));[/sourcecode] Hey presto! All working! :) Would love someone a bit more technical to explain why the previous version worked elsewhere except GoDaddy... Please :D ]]> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/feed/ 1 3 shortcomings of Twitter http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:42:55 +0000 Steve Reynolds http://www.reynoldsftw.com/?p=62 ezTweet I came across a problem with my implementation of cURL updating my status using the Twitter API. It worked fine on all of my other hosting environments and dev environment... I was stumped... After some Google searching I found out that using cURL to access secure destinations required a proxy implementation, however GoDaddy seem to suggest now that this is no longer needed. So - was it my code? Odd that it would work elsewhere though... I tried all sorts of stuff, but eventually found the problem. Originally I had the following in my cURL statements: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml?status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat)));[/sourcecode] Turns out, GoDaddy is not a fan of this implementation... Like I said, it works, Twitter do accept it - however GoDaddy for whatever reason stopped it. The Twitter API documentation states it does require a POST, so I re-jigged the code to the following: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml"; curl_setopt($this->ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat))));[/sourcecode] Hey presto! All working! :) Would love someone a bit more technical to explain why the previous version worked elsewhere except GoDaddy... Please :D ]]> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/feed/ 1 Steve Reynolds Blog » ezTweet http://www.reynoldsftw.com Being Generalist. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 cURL on GoDaddy issue… http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:42:55 +0000 Steve Reynolds http://www.reynoldsftw.com/?p=62 ezTweet I came across a problem with my implementation of cURL updating my status using the Twitter API. It worked fine on all of my other hosting environments and dev environment... I was stumped... After some Google searching I found out that using cURL to access secure destinations required a proxy implementation, however GoDaddy seem to suggest now that this is no longer needed. So - was it my code? Odd that it would work elsewhere though... I tried all sorts of stuff, but eventually found the problem. Originally I had the following in my cURL statements: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml?status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat)));[/sourcecode] Turns out, GoDaddy is not a fan of this implementation... Like I said, it works, Twitter do accept it - however GoDaddy for whatever reason stopped it. The Twitter API documentation states it does require a POST, so I re-jigged the code to the following: [sourcecode language='php']$this->twitterHost .= "statuses/update.xml"; curl_setopt($this->ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($stat))));[/sourcecode] Hey presto! All working! :) Would love someone a bit more technical to explain why the previous version worked elsewhere except GoDaddy... Please :D ]]> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/curl-on-godaddy-issue/feed/ 1 3 shortcomings of Twitter http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/three-twitter-shortcomings/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/three-twitter-shortcomings/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:25:06 +0000 Steve Reynolds http://www.reynoldsftw.com/?p=48 Twitter Birdie

Help users find people to follow

One of the big reasons why I came and went so quickly - I was (and still am) finding it extremely difficult to find people that I should be following. Right now, I'm relying on 3rd party applications to suggest people that may be of interest to me, such as Mr Tweet. Surely Twitter could be doing this is better, more integrated ways? It knows what I'm looking at, so must be able to build in some kind of recommendation engine? It was even difficult to find Tweeters that I knew existed. Thankfully Twitter have recently introduced the Find People functionality which greatly helps - how did they go so long without it?

Stop burying features

Why oh why do they hide the search functionality with a link right at the bottom of the page? This is arguably their most powerful feature, especially as its ajaxified (it notifies you of new results to your search). It really annoys me when I have to scroll for endless screens on my /home page to run a simple search. Add a search box to the UI!!

Improve the tweeting process

[caption id="attachment_49" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="ezTweet Screenshot"]ezTweet Screenshot[/caption]

One of my biggest problems with Twitter led me to build my own tweet submitter, ezTweet. Twitter allows you to shorten your urls when you post which is nice, but it will only shorten them if your big url and tweet is less than 140 characters! WHY?? So, I've got to go off to tinyurl.com or similar - make my url tiny, and then go back to Twitter to submit my tweet. Very annoying! I want to use my 140 characters to the maximum, don't limit me to that before you've even shrunk my urls for me!

ezTweet addresses this problem for me. It allows me to "tinify" my urls there and then when authoring my tweet, so I can guarantee a successful submit. It took me an hour to code (a tad more to make it a wordpress plugin). Come on Twitter! This is a simple usability thing to fix!

Why am I back?

Good question. Since my last visit to Twitter, I've become involved in some side projects, as well as progressed with my career. I'm trying to focus on embracing social media, and using it as a tool to promote myself and the projects I am working on. My friends and I would discuss the same problem I had the first time... "What is the point?". My answer to this now is - it's only good if you have something to say that you want to promote to people you don't know. It makes sense this way, it gives you a reason to tweet your thoughts - the same as blogging! Anyway, enjoy ezTweet - let me know your feedback and feature requests to make it even easier to tweet!]]> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/01/three-twitter-shortcomings/feed/ 0