BuiltByDave.co.uk The Wireframe of a Blog </> feed

Quick tip. If someone tweets, “@builtbydave ….” the tweet will show in my replies tab. If they “…. @builtbydave ….” it doesn’t — there’s a good chance I’ll miss it. Using a somewhat unknown feature on http://icanhaz.com I created a quick URL to get those missed tweets.

http://icanhaz.com/nonreplies/YOUR_USERNAME_HERE
e.g. http://icanhaz.com/nonreplies/builtbydave

I recommend subscribing to the given feed in your favourite feed reader

What are the consequences (positive, and negative) of having a public todo list? I’m sure I’m not the first person to wonder, anyway..

Something you wanted me to do? Just prefix your tweet “@builtbydave #todo” and it’ll appear in my public todo list & my feed reader. Here’s one I sent to Aral:

What’d the use be on something like this outside of todo’s, i.e. sending a link. Not to dissimilar to del.icio.us for:builtbydave tag… @builtbydave #link? I’m sure my subconscious has me thinking about this from Alfie’s blog post, @everyone: The command line is mainstream. 

While not following on from my last post (Twitter as a search engine?), this is about Twitter and search.

Via a Greasemonkey script we’ve added a search box to Twitter that will take you to their newly acquired search, yes.. their current interface doesn’t have a search through tweets function.

Greasemonkey users, here’s the install link.

Here’s an experiment. Since Twitter acquired & integrated Summize ($15m Cash+Stock) they’ve had search. A better search then Twitter had previously. So, why not try it as your default search?

For Safari:

1. Open Terminal
2. Run:
   perl -pi -e 's/%@.google.com\/%@\?q=%@&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8/search.twitter.com\/search\?no=%@,%@&q=%@/g' /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari(this should all be on one line within Terminal)

For Firefox:

• Install Twitter Search
• Or, get more in-depth instructions:
  http://prototypes.builtbydave.co.uk/twitter-search/

I make a point to signup to most web startups I come across. I also archive the emails I receive from them in Gmail. If you’ve ever added me as a friend, sent me a direct message, tagged me in an image it’s all logged here.

It’s very unscientific & each company emails you on different notifications, however it is directly related to the people I know and what social networks we use. I don’t log the data from my browser but I’m pretty sure Twitter is my most visited site. Seems to me that Twitter is doing something right…

There’s nothing technical about this post (sorry for all those that expect me to be a techie 24×7). It’s about story telling, and my realization of a few things. Yesterday I made a lead, you know, a lead to plug two things, or as Wikipedia says, “An electrical connection consisting of a length of wire”. I hear you asking, “um, what’s the online bit of the title”, well, I Flickr‘d and Twitter‘d it as I went.

• 01:38 PM Argh, I don’t have the right leads to plug my studio monitors in. I need loud music fix.
• 01:38 PM Screw it! Out comes soldering iron/mini blow torch, audio leads, connectors & adapters etc. Real hacking kids.
• 02:05 PM The prototype works, http://flickr.com/photos/bu… now the soldering. Note how I ran out of real tape, brown had to do.
• 03:21 PM Prototype to finished product, http://flickr.com/photos/bu… & successfully listening to music on studio monitors.

I had great fun with this. Yes, it was basic, but I’m not really good with wires (yet, I’d love to learn more), onto ‘my realization of a few things’:

• It’s always software these days. Seeing finished objects (no matter how small) rocks. It’s so easy to forget this when we deal with software day-in-day-out. Touchable, real world “stuff” is where it’s at.
• Eargasm is a word (well, by Urban Dictionary standards)
• Story telling is another subject I’m not great at, but I’m getting the feeling Twitter is good for telling your story. What your thinking & doing. It’s obvious, but what with Twitter being full of people just @replying sometimes it’s worth reminding yourself

The more technical bit

Ok, couldn’t resist. If your eagle eyed you may have spotted that I machine tagged the photo of the final product, I’ve thought for a while it’d be cool to have a service that tracks specific conversations on Twitter, you could also pull images from Flickr about that conversations.

I blogged a while ago that my my email had become voicemail, if someone writes on my wall, or messages me in Facebook I get “To see what Katy wrote, follow the link below” (this isn’t an attack at Facebook, it’s just most popular at this time, and many other web apps are guilty). Now, I understand they want to up their page views for advertising and so forth, however, what if I don’t want to reply using a message in Facebook? Let me choose my platform of communication..

If you DM (Direct Message) me on Twitter, I get an email with your message in. This is better, as I can read your message straight away. However, what if I want to email my reply, I’d have to; find your email address, replace it in the To field. What if I don’t have your email address? It’s really relevant on Twitter as sometimes 140 characters isn’t enough.

Why can’t I just hit reply? There is no technical reason. Data protection? If you messaged me I’d say there’s a good chance you want me to reply, so, while not a lawyer I’d be surprised. Dammit, let me choose my platform of communication!.

Rant over. Yes I know they’re not stopping me choosing, but they’re not making it easy either.

What does it do? Gets your friends 3 most recent public photos from Flickr in a mobile friendly page.

How did it come about? Josh and I have recently been discussing doing a few really quick, small but useful web applications. I commented on Seth Levine’s blog post Twittering Away which lead to an email discussion. I asked for his thoughts on Radar and later mentioned I’d been thinking about doing something much more basic, but similar with Flickr, as that’s where my data is. Then I found an hour to hack it together.

It was done very quickly so it’s not without problems (consider it beta), but is a good proof of concept, and I’m enjoying using it. Point your mobile’s browser to http://prototypes.builtbydave.co.uk/f3 to follow your friends photos where ever you are.