The big one: TweetScribe.me

So, you all remember a few days back when i said i have a big project going on? Well, this is it! Tweetscribe.me is a new service i created around twitter. In a nutshell think FeedBurner meets twitter and some more. Here is the idea. You subscribe to your favorite blogs and each time a post is made you are DM’ed. Moreover, through the blogging list that is created, with blogs that have enlisted their selfs, you can find out about more blogs that might interest you and “follow” them. It’s a new way of following… Blogs instead of users.

Moreover, no need for a subscription! As long as you have a twitter account and follow the user @twscribe you can log in! I require that you follow this user because this is the only way that the service can DM you. I feel this is a revolutionary idea on how you can follow blogs around. For webmasters and blog owners this can be a perfect opportunity to give their readers a nice way to follow them around plus promote their blog / site.

The integration with WordPress is as easy as one-two-three. I have created a small plugin that will take care of the whole process. You just download and install. Then visit the Settings->TweetScribe panel and fill in your twitter username and password. Uppon saving, the plugin will contact TweetScribe, enlist your blog and get the API key needed. As simple as that. Then just make a post For the future, i am also planning of adding the feature of following post comments also. Something like “subscribe to posts” but with TweetScribe. Cool huh?

It also has a nice and simple API. For now, the only available plugin is for WordPress. I intend on creating some more though, to support even more platforms like Joomla, PHPBB and a few other. If you feel like contributing i’ll be more than happy to hear from you!

If you want to learn more about TweetScribe, why not check out the video tour i made for the service. It’s the first time you will get to hear my voice anyways.

So, what do you think? Are you going to use TweetScribe on your blog? How about writing a nice review about it I am counting on all my readers to promote this, provided they feel the same way i feel about it too.

101 Sociable links for manual insertion in WordPress

A few months back i had a post about how to get rid of your sociable plugins and doing the same thing by editing your theme. In that post i have included a few popular sociable networks such as Digg and Stumbleuppon but today i have decided to include as much as possible, 101 to be exact. You can go through them and decide which ones you want to use. The links are included as they should be in your theme. Take a look at the older post on how to do it and get the links from here.

I used the Sociable plugin source code to extract the links. You can also find images for the links herein here (also from the same plugin): 101 Sociable images (424) - 82.18 KB

As an example of how to use it, here is one with Digg:

For more details please check out the older post. So here we go!

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Another plugin: PR Checker

It’s been a while since i released a plugin but here i am again! A couple of months back Yan approached me with a plugin he wanted. We worked it out and this is the result. What this essentially does is it allows you to build a link list and maintain it with statistics for your visitors to see. You have seen this around the marketing blogs especially, where the blogger has a list of websites he thinks it’s best for bloggers to comment and get a reputation at. You can see the plugin in action at Yan’s place. You can see more on the plugin’s page.

Now i know that this kind of plugin can be marketed and maybe reward with quite some money. Yan said we should do it but i don’t think i have the time to dedicate to it in order to make it a nice commercial product. Moreover i am an opensource kinda guy. I like giving things out and saying “well if you like it then please consider donating”. This is much more like me. So, i decided to release it upon the world as a GNU GPL plugin, listed on the WordPress plugin directory.

All i am asking is that if you guys use it, and it saves you some trouble (which i think it will) then consider donating to me as a token of appreciation. Something like saying “hey there i like your plugin and i appreciate your effort”.

If you have any suggestions or find any bug let me know and i can work it out. You can also hire me if you want something more complex to build

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Make your #FollowFriday easy!

There is a huge meme going on the Twitter world these days called #FollowFriday (started by Micah with whom i am in no way affiliated). I am sure you all know what it’s all about. You just tweet suggestions about people you think your followers should be acquainted with and maybe interested in their tweets. This results in massive follows on Fridays, even for me, a small little birdie. I wasn’t into this meme until recently. I always thought that it wasn’t that worth it anyhow. But, a couple of Fridays ago, i decided to join in and tweet a follow Friday. I wanted to thank all those tweeple that make my experience with this social network pleasant. So, i started creating the tweet and i found out it was rather hard to compose it. I had to visit twitter, find my followers, choose among them and for each one i chose i had to copy his username and make sure everything went well. It took me well over 5 minutes to compose the tweet. And then i thought that a tool that would let me view my followers and simply click on which one i want to add would be great. I searched a little and found nothing ready. Since i always wanted to try out Twitter’s API i decided to go on with one of my own. And, as a result, “FollowFriday” tool was created. So, if you want to check it out and see if it fits your needs be my guest! Rest assured that none of the credentials you provide is stored on the server.

I would also like to thank Kim for troubleshooting with me. Hope you like it and let me know if you find any bug or have any suggestion!

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BloggerBuddy Hacks: Change the look and feel

With this post i am starting a small series of posts about customizing and maintaining BloggerBuddy. As you know BloggerBuddy is built upon the Adobe framework, AIR. This actually allows a programmer to use web development techniques and languages (HTML, Javascript) on a desktop application. What makes it unique is that it flawlessly integrates on online services.

So, essentially, BloggerBuddy is a web service, a “web site” if i may use the term. I’ve been asked before how you can change the width of the separator between the subscribed blogs and the feeds. It would be good if i added some sort of options page/window but, well i haven’t. So, a quick and dirty way to do it is simply to edit the css file responsible for the layout. Yes! There is a CSS file that controls the layout like every web page! The file resides on the folder you chose to install BloggerBuddy and it is called style.css. In there locate:

As you can see it’s a typical css block. This particular segment is responsible for the layout of the feeds list. What you need to change is the property “width” to something bigger or smaller according to your preferences. You can fiddle further with the file but i would suggest keeping a backup of the original one in case something gets extremely wrong. After you are done save the file and restart BloggerBuddy. Your changes will be reflected!