Here you go:
Get Twitters Between Yahoo! Pipe.
Parameters: start = Start date/time, end = End date/time, userId = ID of user to get updates for.
Archive for February, 2007
In my previous post, Abdul Qabiz asked for the ability to get Twitter updates that occurred within a given time period. Sweet! So, I cloned my first pipe and in about thirty seconds, I had a new API method (it's taken me much longer to write this blog post!)
I just published my first Yahoo! Pipe (oh big day, big day!) It adds a feature to the TwitAPI (and here, and here) that I've wanted for a while, which is the ability to get only those Twitter updates that have occurred since a certain time.
You can interactively configure and test the pipe on Yahoo! Pipes.
Here's a test with HTML output. You can have the results returned as JSON and RSS.
Note that you must URLEncode the date when testing the pipe via a URL.
One advantage of using Yahoo! Pipes is that my server isn't going to get killed in case this call becomes popular. Another is that it was fun (oooh, pipes!) Of course, the fun only started after I switched to using Yahoo! Pipes on FireFox following a bout of frustration on Safari (Yahoo! Pipes doesn't appear to work correctly in Safari currently and it would be very helpful if the application stated this -- and refused to run -- instead of failing silently when you try to connect a pipe.)
I hope that the Twitterites-In-Charge will add this call to the official API at some point but, until that time, this should cut down the bandwidth used for Twitter mashups, without missing messages.
Update: You can also Get Twitters Between.
Executive Summary: FlashAid enables Ajax/JavaScript to find out if a user's screen reader is currently communicating with the browser and turn off the JavaScript functionality accordingly to make their sites accessible. It only works on Internet Explorer on Windows.
And now the full story...
I just released an update to FlashAid that, well, actually makes FlashAid useful.
You can see a live demo of FlashAid here.
(FlashAid only works on Internet Explorer on Windows. Make sure you have your screen reader on before testing.)
Version 0.1, the previous release, was a proof-of-concept that I hacked together after a talk with Jeremy. All it did was pass the value of the System.capabilities.hasAccessibility property from Flash to JavaScript.
The Adobe Flash docs for System.capabilities.hasAccessibility states the following:
A Boolean value that is true if the player is running in an environment that supports communication between Flash Player and accessibility aids; false otherwise.
What the documentation should state, is:
A Boolean value that is true if the player is running in Internet Explorer on Windows.
Essentially, that's all hasAccessibility appears to show. The Flash player uses MSAA to talk to screen readers but it only works in Internet Explorer (FireFox has MSAA support but the Flash player returns false for hasAccessibility on that platform, for example.)
So, the FlashAid proof-of-concept was essentially useless (you can check for IE on Windows with one line of code in JavaScript.)
Version 1.0, though, does have an important use. It's a one trick pony that communicates the value of Flash's Accessibility.isActive property to JavaScript. This one's useful because, on Internet Explorer on Windows, it tells you whether the user's screen reader is actually communicating with the browser.
Why is this important? Because it allows Ajax developers using progressive enhancement to detect whether the user is using a screen reader and turn off the Ajax/JavaScript functionality to allow these users to access their sites and applications.
Again, keep in mind that this only works for Internet Explorer on Windows but it's still an improvement on what was previously possible.
I hope you find FlashAid v1.0 useful.
Tom Morris, with whom I had a very pleasant chat at BarCampLondon2 about Twitter-related stuff, has just released Twitter Tube Tracker. This is very cool. Basically, he's got Twitter accounts for every line on the London Underground and you add the ones that you're interested in to your friends list to get notifications of delays, etc. Nice!
Thom alerted me yesterday (thanks, man) that the getFriends() method in the TwitAPI stopped working.
Twitter apparently updated the structure of the friends links on their pages. I've now updated TwitAPI so that the getFriends() method works again.
Test: Get a list of my friends: XML, JSON, Flash Remoting (use the UI).
It looks like the changes were just a regular refactoring (they seem to have separated the images/thumbnails on to several asset servers and thus the URLs to the images have changed.)
This change doesn't affect the getDirectMessages() method (which still works) or any of the other TwitAPI methods like addFriend(), removeFriend(), etc.
There was also a question from Mark asking if you can use the API from my server. Sure, that's what it's for! Go right ahead! 
Feel free to hit the XML feeds (get_friends_xml.php, get_direct_messages_xml.php), JSON endpoint and the Flash Remoting gateway (there is a crossdomain file on aralbalkan.com so you can hit it directly from your Flash apps).
Leave me a comment if you make anything cool using TwitAPI and I'll showcase it on the site!
I just read an informative post on Justin's blog about how older versions of the Flash Player will not work as expected on Microsoft Vista due to changes in the security model. The areas that are reported as being affected are express install, shared objects, local connection and file reference.
Basically, in order for Flash content to play properly on Vista, users must run the latest Flash Player version (9,0,28 or higher).
In other words, if your users are on Vista and complain that your Flash sites or applications are not working properly, you'll have to tell them to upgrade to the latest player.
Thanks for the heads up, Justin!
I just received spam mail from flex-data-services.com that reads:
Hello,
We're trying to find out how to deliver you better service in the future.
If you have 30 seconds, we'd really appreciate it if you could follow the link below and answer several multiple choice questions. It really will take less than a minute and all responses will be kept completely confidential. This is a single time campaign and you won't receive any more mails from us.
http://www.flex-data-services.com/survey.php?campaign=CHANGED&sid=CHANGED
Thank you for your help!
FDS Team
(I've changed the campaign ID and sid in the URL above.)
You could be fooled for thinking that this was a legitimate email from Adobe, especially since it is signed "FDS Team". I almost was fooled into answering it until I saw that it was sent to my PayPal account's email address.
On the web site that it leads to, there's a questionnaire powered by a system called UCCASS.
This email is definitely spam and most definitely not sent by Adobe. I'm sure the folks at Adobe would be interested in finding out who is behind this questionnaire. At the very least, I'm sure that Flex is a trademark (and probably Flex Data Services too).
I'm definitely not filling this in and I'd urge you to be careful if you received a similar email.
Update: Here is public information for the registrant of the flex-data-services.com domain, based on a whois lookup:
Todor Kolev (todor {at} vip(.)bg)
none
Sofiya
Sofija,1000
BG
Tel. +359.1234567
This domain definitely doesn't belong to Adobe and I smell something fishy here.
Update: The registrant info is most likely fake as Todor Kolev is apparently a leading Bulgarian actor, and would you look at that phone number -- sheer genius! Funny how the person responsible for this didn't hide the fact that they're from Bulgaria, however (or, they're just that good!)
NikO just implemented a new look for the OSFlash Wiki that should hopefully make it much easier to use. It's a very clean look that's an evolution of the previous style. In place of the fixed-width layout we had before, NikO's new design is fluid. He's also lightened up the header and I personally love how minimalist it is now.
He's working on changing the architecture of the wiki too to make use of tags. You can read about the coming updates in the OSFlash Wiki Changes post on the new OSFlash Blog.
I was talking with Tom at BarCampLondon2 and he suggested that it would be useful to be able to get a list of direct messages for a given user. I was having issues with the Regex for doing this on the night (my older version of RegexBuddy -- best damn Regex tool in the universe -- and PHP weren't getting along) but I've since updated RegexBuddy to its latest version and added a new method call to TwitAPI called getDirectMessages.
It returns an array of objects (or an XML doc, depending on your method of access) with the following properties for each direct message:
- messsageID: ID of the message.
- senderUserName: User name of user who sent the message.
- senderUserId: User ID of the user who sent the message.
- senderProfileImageName: Name of the user's profile image (untested with users without image names -- don't rely heavily on this, I might remove it.)
- message: The actual text of the direct message.
- sent: When the message was sent (may be in the "X minutes ago" format or a timestamp depending on how it is returned by Twitter.)
Usage instructions:
JSON
http://aralbalkan.com/twitapi/json.php/Twitter.getDirectMessages/userName/passWord
XML
http://aralbalkan.com/twitapi/get_direct_messages_xml.php?user=userName&pass=passWord
Flash Remoting
Check out the AMFPHP service browser.
I wonder what this is going to be?
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