The Dev Shack » Twitter

Twitter.com Security Issue

mfleming — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:41:29 +0000

Twitter.com is currently being exploited via an onmouseover security issue. You can read more about this via Graham Cluley’s blog. I would highly avoid Twitter.com until this get’s resolved, and would stick to using a desktop app like TweetDeck or Seesmic, etc…

My Favorite Android Apps – #1 Touiteur

mfleming — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:30:06 +0000

#1 – Touiteur

I am a huge fan of Twitter. I mostly use it for keeping up with news and sports and for a few aggregators I run. In looking for a Twitter app there is one requirement that is a must for me: merged timelines. I have multiple accounts and enjoy having them in a merged view. Many of the Twitter apps support multiple accounts, but not merged timelines. My first Twitter app I used on my Droid was the popular Twidroid application. It had the features I used the most so I purchased the pro version of it and have used it for quite a period of time. I used Twidroid until 3 weeks ago, when I came across Touiteur. Touiteur is now my main Twitter app on my Droid.

Touiteur has most of the same features as Twidroid does, but the user interface is much nicer in my opinion. It also does a much better job of remembering where you last left off when viewing your timeline. Twidroid would frequently forget where I left off viewing and would assume I had read all of the tweets. Touiteur not only merges the main timeline, but also merges the replies and direct messages from all the accounts.

Some of the other features I take advantage of:

Bit.ly URL shortening with the option of using your own API key
Support for multiple photo services with Tweetphoto, Twitpic and YFrog
Support for Twitter lists
Search
Trends
Favorites

The market contains many difference choices of apps for use with Twitter, but this one has worked the best for me given some of my needs. Touiteur is also available via a pro version which unlocks a few more features.

Post #2: Use the .NET TweetSharp Library to Integrate with Twitter via OAuth

mfleming — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:42:55 +0000

Today’s post is the second in a series explaining how to integrate TweetSharp into your .NET application using OAuth. In our first post we covered the basics of registering a new application with Twitter. This post will cover how you ask, then grant access from someone’s Twitter account to your new application using OAuth.

We will start by creating a very simple page in our application with a single button. When clicked the button will begin the OAuth process via Twitter. Essentially, the user will tell us they would like to grant acesss to their account from our application. From there we will take their request, send the request to Twitter, then grab the response.

So our first step is to create a way for the user to let us know they would like to use our app. As stated above, this will just be a simple button they user will click to start the process.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>


       


       


       


            Clicking the button below will start the OAuth process, which will grant our application access to your Twitter account.

In our code behind we will start our process in the function tied to our button. You will notice that I have set some variables that hold some of the values we set up in the first post. When you registered your new application with Twitter they set us up a Consumer Key and a Consumer Secret. We will use these as part of the request we pass back to Twitter. So make sure you replace the variables below with the values from your application. We have tied our click event to a function named Oauth_Click. This function starts our OAuth process. We first set up our request, then pass our user to Twitter.

using System; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Extensions; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Fluent; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Model;


public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{

    private string _consumerKey = "YourKey";

    private string _consumerSecret = "YourSecret";     
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    {     
    }     
    protected void Oauth_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

    {

        var request = GetRequestToken();     
        var authorizeUrl = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest()

            .Authentication

            .GetAuthorizationUrl(request.Token);     
        Response.Redirect(authorizeUrl);

    }     
    private OAuthToken GetRequestToken()

    {

        var requestToken = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest()

            .Authentication.GetRequestToken(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret);     
        var response = requestToken.Request();

        var result = response.AsToken();     
        if (result == null)

        {

            var error = response.AsError();

            if (error != null)

            {

                throw new Exception(error.ErrorMessage);

            }

        }

return result; } }

So when our user clicks the button, they will see a message from Twitter asking if they would like to grant our app access. From here the user can log into their Twitter account and verify our access to their account.

Easy so far! Our last piece of completing the OAuth access is set up our callback URL. Remember from our first post that we set up a callback URL as part of setting up our application. This URL is where Twitter will send the response back to our application. From here, we need to verify our response, then store the returned OAuth information for the user.

I set up my callback URL as welcome.aspx. The display of this page is just a label, where we can pass the result to our user.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="welcome.aspx.cs" Inherits="welcome" %>

Once again in our code behind we will use the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret variables for our application. When this page is loaded we will first check to make sure we have a valid request that has been returned from Twitter. If not, you can trap this and do something like send the user back to our default page to try again. If we do have a valid request returned, we can validate the credentials passed back to us and display a nice neat welcome message to our user.

using System; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Extensions; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Fluent; using Dimebrain.TweetSharp.Model;


public partial class welcome : System.Web.UI.Page

{

    private string _consumerKey = "YourKey";

    private string _consumerSecret = "YourSecret";    
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    {

        var requestToken = Request["oauth_token"];

        if (requestToken == null)

        {

            //place your error code here, as no token was returned

        }

        else

        {

            // exchange returned request token for access token

            var access = GetAccessToken(requestToken);    
            //verify returned info

            var query = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest()

                .AuthenticateWith(_consumerKey,

                                  _consumerSecret,

                                  access.Token,

                                  access.TokenSecret)

                .Account()

                .VerifyCredentials()

                .AsXml();    
            var response = query.Request();

            var identity = response.AsUser();    
//store the returned values for future use

//access.Token

//access.TokenSecret    
            //display welcome message

            welcomeLabel.Text = "Welcome " + identity.ScreenName + ", you now have access to our demo application.";

        }

    }    
    private OAuthToken GetAccessToken(string requestToken)

    {

        var accessToken = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest()

            .Authentication.GetAccessToken(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, requestToken);    
        var response = accessToken.Request();

        var result = response.AsToken();

return result; } }

We have now successfully set up access to our application for a user via OAuth. One step that is not in this demo is storing the values returned from Twitter. Depending on what you plan to do with your app, you will need to store these values for future API requests. TweetSharp will return to you two variables, Token and TokenSecret for the user. In my apps I store these in a database to grab for future use.

That’s it for today’s post. Our final post in this series will show you how to post status updates via your application.

New Series: Use the .NET TweetSharp Library to Integrate with Twitter via OAuth

mfleming — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:52:05 +0000

This is the first post on a new series I will be posting on integrating TweetSharp into your .NET applications. It will also show you how to use OAuth, as all the examples will be connecting to Twitter via OAuth.

So what is TweetSharp? It’s a .NET library that hooks 100% into the Twitter API. The project is constantly updated as bugs and enhancements are pushed out to the Twitter API. I have been using TweetSharp in an application I wrote 6 months ago and it has worked flawless.

I will start by explaining what this series will cover. In the first post I will go over how you actually create an application on your Twitter account. By the end we will be grabbing our security tokens via OAuth and posting status updates to Twitter via OAuth.

Our first step in setting up our little application will be to register a new app with Twitter. In order to use the OAuth features, you must start by doing this. So let’s get started.

Log into your Twitter account via the web. Once you are logged in point your browser to http://twitter.com/apps where you will see a listing of your current apps, or a link to register a new application.

Click on the link to register a new application. From this page you can start to enter in the details of your new application including an icon and the name of your app. Our most important areas of the signup for this post are to set the application type to “Browser”, the default access type to “Read & Write” and the Callback URL. The Callback URL is where Twitter where send the user to after they grant your application access to their account via OAuth. We will discuss the code on this page in another post. It’s also important to note that this URL needs to be publicly available. For now set this to the full URL of your callback page.

Once you submit this page you will be taken to the main screen for your new application. Take note of all the information returned on this page, as it will be critical later on! Both the consumer key and the consumer secret fields will be used in our code to work with OAuth.

So now that your new app is set up, you can read a little more about TweetSharp and go ahead and download the library. Our next post will explain how to authorize a user’s Twitter account to use your application via OAuth.

MLB onBase: An Adobe AIR App

mfleming — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:01:34 +0000

I have talked before about some of the Major League Baseball apps on this blog before. They have added another application to their arsenal this week: MLB.com OnBase. This application is built on Adobe AIR and is one slick little app.

When you first start the app you can choose your favorite team or teams or you can flag your favorite players. It then uses these settings to notify you of any news or updates involving your selections. So for example, you will get an alert when the lineups are set for your teams games. There are also alerts for in game notifications. When a team scores in a game that involves one of your flagged teams, an alert pops up informing you that a run or runs scored and how they scored. It also displays the scoreboard of your team’s games.

Twitter is also an integral part of the application. Part of the news feeds involving your favorite teams or players , are tweets that are found matching your selections. This updates every few minutes. You can also hook up your Twitter account and send tweets directly from the application.

I have always believed that Major League Baseball is at the forefront of internet related technology in the pro sports. Their MLB.tv offering is the best streaming technology in sports, bar none. With the release of this application they continue to be the front runners in cool technology.

UberTwitter Releases New Update – Adds Multiple Accounts and Ads

mfleming — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:14:08 +0000

Most of you know that my favorite Twitter client for my BlackBerry has been UberTwitter. I started using it since their first beta release and have been an avid user ever since. Yesterday saw a new update to the application, Beta 4. Two items included in this update jumped right out at me.The first is the support of multiple accounts. I have been waiting for one of these apps to add support for multiple accounts for awhile now. I have various Twitter accounts set up for different interests and it has always been a pain to have multiple Twitter applications installed on my BlackBerry. This new feature seems to work well so far. You can set up as many accounts as you wish and each are viewed independently (meaning the timelines for each account are not combined). It’s very easy to switch between accounts and this switch occurs fairly fast.

The second feature, and the one that seems the biggest gripe for most users, is the addition of advertisements. At the top of the timeline is a rotating ad, with mine mostly showing a Yahoo ad. This addition to the application could be a downfall for some users, and cause them to go looking for another app to use. Reading around a bit it does appear that UberTwitter plans to release a paid application which would remove the ads. As long as the price is right, I would pay for UberTwitter, as it’s still the best Twitter application for the BlackBerry in my opinion.

Some of the other new features in Beta 4:

TwitVid support
You can block users
bit.ly integration
Faster photo uploads

One other quick note, I FINALLY received my beta invite to SocialScope this morning. A lot of BlackBerry users claim this as their favorite social media application, as it works with Twitter and Facebook. I will post my thoughts on SocialScope after giving it a run for a few days.

Twitter API Issues

mfleming — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:26:11 +0000

It appears that Twitter is still experiencing some issues with some API calls. UberTwitter is still not returning any data on my BlackBerry, and my news aggregators that post to Twitter using TweetSharp are returning nothing via the response. I would take a guess that these issues are related to the DDoS attacks yesterday. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon. Anyone else having issues with the Twitter API?

Today’s DDoS Attacks Due to Cyber Warfare?

mfleming — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:41:53 +0000

I am sure that most of you are aware of today’s attack against Twitter. The attack crippled the service for a good portion of the day. News is coming out now about the attack, and according to an article by The New York Times the attack could be related to cyber warfare. The article cites Bill Woodcock, an expert in this area, who believes the attack was a result of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Woodcock stated the attack was not like a normal DDoS attack, as these attacks were using spam emails to overwhelm the service. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come.

Twitter is Down

mfleming — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:28:28 +0000

Twitter seems to be experiencing a rather massive outage this morning. The social media site has been down for around an hour and a half. There is no word on what the issue is or when it will be resolved. Twitter’s official status blog states they are looking into the issue: Twitter Status

ESPN’s New Social Media Policy: Good or Bad?

mfleming — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:36:15 +0000

Yesterday afternoon ESPN released a memo to it’s employees detailing guidelines in their social media policy. I’m not sure they were really guidelines, but appear to say you cannot participate in any social media conversations that involve sports (without prior approval from your department head). You can judge the policy yourself by reading the memo as sent to Mashable.

I do agree that employers should have some form of a policy on social media. In my opinion, this should state common sense items, such as not bad mouthing your employer or coworkers, not giving away company secrets, or not destroying the company’s brand image. You do represent your company in more ways than you realize. To me those are common sense guidelines to most people, but since some people may not think like everybody else they need to be included in a policy. Personal social media accounts can greatly benefit your employer as well. You can announce new projects, new brands, etc… from your personal account that benefit your employer. It’s also a great networking avenue, which helps to keep you informed of all the latest happenings in your industry.

With that said, I do believe ESPN is missing the point with some of their policy guidelines. The sports information industry is ultra competitive, with every outlet trying to break the next big story. What faster way is there to announce breaking news than Twitter? You can grab your smartphone and post a Tweet in under minute. With this policy ESPN will need to wait for a story to be posted to break the same news item? While they wait other outlets have already broken the same item using Twitter. Why not allow this? I do agree with most parts of the policy, but it’s surprising to see them take away an outlet that provides the fastest output of news available.

On a personal note on this story, it does bum me out a bit. I have enjoyed following some of the ESPN employees Twitter accounts. They provide some great insight on their respective sports in 140 characters.