Alcides Fonseca

So Twitter is leaving Rails and I bet Rails programmers are not happy with this. Their #1 success application at a large scale is leaving the building. I guess now it’s more difficult for them to persuade businesses to start using Ruby on Rails.

One the other hand, Jaiku is moving in to Google App Engine and I guess they’re using Python. They’re minimizing the risk of scaling issues (something they could have learned form Twitter’s success). I still wonder what’s the key think that makes them working on Jaiku. Is it Android? Or some killer-feature?

So Twitter is the internet application of the moment. The so called IRC of the web 2.0 has got the internet junkies Geeks 2.0 and also coming to regular people’s life.

There is an enourmous discussion on whether Twitter is useful or not. Some turn it off to get work done, others delete their account because it’s killing their blogging to then go back and realize they can’t live without it.

Now 37 signals, the company behind Backpack (and some others) and also Ruby on Rails is getting their Twitter-clone applied to entrepises ready. They’re naming it In/Out and they’ve been using it internally for the last year. Why do I call it a twitter clone? Because it allows you to update your status on What are you doing so your workmates know at any time what is keeping you busy. I love their idea of charging companies for such an idea!

One of the advantages of the OpenID system is that you don’t need a password at all to login. In fact André showed me MyVidoop where they use image categories to login instead of the traditional password.

Here is a new login workflow that uses your twitter account to send you your password. You can receive it by IM, SMS or your favorite Twitter client, and just login with it. As simple as that, and you are using your twitter account to login everywhere OpenID is available.

Pretty cool! I just wish Twitter themselves buy or develop this system, so we can all have official Twitter OpenIDs!

Congratulations Sérgio!

TwitterNotes has won the Mashup of the Day award. It was judged by its Uniqueness, Creativity, User Experience, Utility and Content. Haven’t you tried yet?

Now a word about our sponsor. I wouldn’t normally do this, but since our sponsor is not some evil company, but rather a nice music project. You can visit the website, listen and download all the songs! Quite an interesting sponsor, hein?

Oh, and I found about Mashup Challenge a competition that encourages people to develop new web experiences using content APIs already around. Prizes range from Wii to iPod Touch, and 50% off in a Media Temple hosting account for life! Hurry up, since this ends 31 this month!

Tom Morris posted about showing your love or hate about a particular language. He referred to Dan Simard’s project called ihatephp.net where you can add PHP hate messages through twitter. I guess a Java hate would be necessary too.

But not all are about hate. There are people who do believe their language is divine and want to spread the word. I guess I may try to add this to PythonLovers (that is really needing a redesign) and see what comes around.

If you are interested in this task, please let me know ;)

In a world where GTD matters to everyone, Sérgio came up with an idea: Why wouldn’t we use twitter to record some notes? Since you have twitter in almost every platform (mobile phone, PDA, desktop (windows,mac,linux), web, you name it!) it is a good way of posting messages from anywhere and use the API to organize them.

That’s what he did the last week. Started a Rails project, added Twitter4r and a bunch of pluggins and coded a bit lot. As for me, I just made the design and artwork. The layout was based on twitter’s since twitternotes users are used to it.

So, go ahead to http://www.twitternotes.com and login. Then use your favorite twitter client and post something like + i have to tell everyone about twitternotes and that’s it! And you will even tag that message with “twitternotes”. Simpler is impossible!

Microblogging is becoming more and more used by people in this new Social Web. Twitter arrived and made millions of fans. It was such a success they had problems escalating. Taking advantage of that downtimes, Jaiku got many users to switch over to them, giving them more features. IMO, jaiku is my personal aggregator, not a microblogging service. I sticked to twitter, but had its feed in my jaiku webpage. Only if the feed was updated more frequently…

Some time ago Kevin Rose, the kid from Digg, and his team (including my dream girl) came up with this microblogging system with Messages, Files, Links and Events that I find very interesting. Only one disadvantage: It only works from the web or the AIR app that cannot be minimized to tray. Thankfully they are getting a public API avaiable soon. In the meanwhile, some guys managed to hack the API used by the desktop app and made a python module.

Well, using this and Python-Twitter, I made a small script that updates both your Twitter and Pownce status at the same time. And a plus: if you enter a url in the message, it will add it as a link in Pownce ;)

Give it a try and comment with feedback please. If it has some success, I’ll probably do some graphical interface, a jabber/msn bot and in the future add the combined list from both your Twitter and Pownce friends.

Twitter has become one of the greatest services of the Web2.0. More and more users are using it to share thoughts with each other on a simple way. From your browser, jabber, mobile phone or even some desktop applications you could update your status and see your friends messages.

Well now there is a simpler way for those who happen to use MSN messenger. Yet in beta state (as almost every web2.0 app) TwitterMSN is becoming very popular, and if you don’t use twitter yet, just go to http://www.twitter.com, create an account, add me and add to your Windows Live Messenger msn@twittermsn.com and write your status. I’ll be waiting for it, and from then on you’ll receive my updates too ;)

Today I came across Live Earth through twitter. This guys are twittering short ways of helping the environment by changing some little routines in your live.

I am already a follower of LiveEarth070707 and I strongly advice you to follow too.

If you don’t know twitter, it’s a micro-blogging tool in which you’re supposed to answer to the question “What are you doing?”. It works by SMS, Web, Instant Messenging, Desktop apps and in Windows Mobile too

According to Sérgio, I’m addicted to twitter. I think it’s no big deal, but thanks to that, I made my first Windows Mobile application.

It is not a fully twitter client, because it uses the m.twitter.com inside the browser, but has notifications and I think it has all the basic needs to twit in your Pocket PC devide.

You can give it a try but remember is only a alpha version. Feedback is appreciated.

Soon I will make a less webby version of Mobile Twitter.