Colby Palmer - Web apps • Web platform developer • User Interfaces

This morning marked the official deprecation of Twitter's basic authentication system. I had been working toward the changeover, and at about 8 am I switched iTweet.net over to OAuth-based authentication.

Things went pretty smoothly, I hope. Most people seem to have been able to refresh, authenticate with Twitter, and start tweeting again right away. Even aside from the improved security, the nicest immediate benefit is the API rate limit of 350 calls per hour instead of the 150/hour available through basic authentication. This will allow me to do some fun stuff that wasn't possible before.

The people who were most affected by this change were those who use iTweet because twitter.com is blocked due to a company firewall/filter or censorship. These folks are not able to sign in via OAuth, just due to the nature of what OAuth is. I'm bummed that this is the case, but don't immediately see a way around it - however I am open to ideas from any direction.

For the time being I've put a basic-authentication version of iTweet up at:

http://itweet.net/basic/ - and you can use it at that address for the next two weeks.

However, please note that Twitter is going to be cutting down the number of available API requests by 10% every business day until August 31, when basic authentication will be switched off entirely. You can read about this in the twitter-development Google group. If you're one of the folks who use iTweet to get around a filter, this is a bummer.

So by the end of the month people needing a proxy for twitter.com will be out of luck. I'm open to suggestions as to how this inconvenience could be avoided, as this change will happen for all apps, not just iTweet.net - feel free to post ideas in the comments.

Posted on Aug. 17, 2010, 5:57 a.m. Tags: api itweet oauth twitter

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Ahh, it reminds of olden days when Twitter was down more than it was up.  ;-P

iTweet.net has been down since yesterday morning (with a few short reprieves) due to the DoS attacks that are happening.  I'm keeping an eye on it and will update this post when service is restored.

Adding to the confusion, I am not able to post any tweets from Twitter.com or even via SMS, so I am unable to respond to those of you who have asked me what is happening.  Sorry! I hope you've subscribed to my blog's RSS feed.

Twitter has confirmed that the downtime is only affecting some clients, also that SMS is unavailable for some users, and that they are working on the issue.  I guess I'm just lucky enough to fall into both categories!

Update: iTweet.net is back online, after some changes from Twitter and some refactoring on my end to accommodate those changes. Yippeee!
(August 7 2009, 4:30pm PST)

Posted on Aug. 7, 2009, 5:15 p.m. Tags: api itweet twitter

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I just noticed in my web app iTweet that Twitter is reporting a maximum of 150 API requests per hour now! Hurray!  This is great news for Twitter clients, as the API limit is a constant challenge in user interaction.

Twitter had mentioned that this was in the works, but so far I haven't heard mention of them actually launching this upgrade.  I hope it is here to stay!

They have also recently fixed a long-standing bug that caused followers/following methods to report incorrect data. Along with this fix came some new API methods for managing follow relationships - I will be updating iTweet with a new follow/unfollow UI just as soon as I can get to it!

There are some really great improvements coming soon to iTweet.net - stay tuned for much much more.

Posted on July 2, 2009, 4:48 a.m. Tags: api itweet twitter

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Twitter made an alteration to their API for "in reply to" statuses this week that I felt required a change in the way that iTweet.net handles sending @replies.

One of my personal favorite iTweet features is the "in reply to" links that show what tweet a person was @replying to inline - so you can follow conversations without leaving the page you're on.

Previously if no particular status was specified, Twitter assigned the "in reply to" link to the last tweet of the person who was replied to.  As of this week, they are only assigning that link if a particular tweet was specified - otherwise there will be no "in reply to" tweet marked.  This will help make conversation threading much more clear, but it also required that Twitter API clients get on board with the new method to ensure that threads are clearly designated.

(In case you're wondering, @replies to you will still show up in your Replies tab if no tweet was specified - but there will not be a particular thread attached.)

Here's how I've decided to handle this change - when you click the @ button to send a reply, a small box above the tweet input will show you the tweet you're replying to.  If you don't want to mark your tweet as a reply to that status, simply click the "cancel" button.

One bonus of this is that you don't necessarily need to begin a @reply tweet with "@username" - the tweet will get marked as a reply (and appear in the user's Replies tab) whether you use that convention or not.

The only thing you'll need to be careful of is accidentally marking a tweet as part of a conversation if you changed your mind about the original @reply - so don't forget to click the "Cancel" button if you're not going to reply to that tweet.

One idea that occurred to me would be to also tie the "RT" retweet button to this behavior, so that if you retweeted someone they would see that retweet in their "Replies" tab - kind of a nice way of letting them know you liked their tweet enough to retweet it.  Does that sound like a helpful addition?

Let me know in the comments, or tweet or email me with your thoughts!

Technorati Tags: itweet, twitter, api

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Posted on March 8, 2009, 3:14 a.m. Tags: api itweet twitter

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Twitter made an alteration to their API for "in reply to" statuses this week that I felt required a change in the way that iTweet.net handles sending @replies.

One of my personal favorite iTweet features is the "in reply to" links that show what tweet a person was @replying to inline - so you can follow conversations without leaving the page you're on.

Previously if no particular status was specified, Twitter assigned the "in reply to" link to the last tweet of the person who was replied to.  As of this week, they are only assigning that link if a particular tweet was specified - otherwise there will be no "in reply to" tweet marked.  This will help make conversation threading much more clear, but it also required that Twitter API clients get on board with the new method to ensure that threads are clearly designated.

(In case you're wondering, @replies to you will still show up in your Replies tab if no tweet was specified - but there will not be a particular thread attached.)

Here's how I've decided to handle this change - when you click the @ button to send a reply, a small box above the tweet input will show you the tweet you're replying to.  If you don't want to mark your tweet as a reply to that status, simply click the "cancel" button.

One bonus of this is that you don't necessarily need to begin a @reply tweet with "@username" - the tweet will get marked as a reply (and appear in the user's Replies tab) whether you use that convention or not.

The only thing you'll need to be careful of is accidentally marking a tweet as part of a conversation if you changed your mind about the original @reply - so don't forget to click the "Cancel" button if you're not going to reply to that tweet.

One idea that occurred to me would be to also tie the "RT" retweet button to this behavior, so that if you retweeted someone they would see that retweet in their "Replies" tab - kind of a nice way of letting them know you liked their tweet enough to retweet it.  Does that sound like a helpful addition?

Let me know in the comments, or tweet or email me with your thoughts!

Technorati Tags: itweet, twitter, api

Posted on Jan. 23, 2009, 7:03 p.m. Tags: api itweet twitter

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