meta_robert

BeTwittered Gets an Update Tonight

January 31, 2008 – 12:49 pm
I've been hacking about in PHP again.  Found that my use of ereg was outdated by pcre's preg while listening to PHP Architects  "Pro PHP podcast." Besides these archane regular expression changes internally, I've made some nice changes to BeTwittered, my Twitter gadget for Google homepage.  I've made clickable links of replies Now, clicking on an @username will take you to that users homepage.  I've also added a settings page, and moved the logout button there with the new "no pics" option.  I felt moving the logout option was a good idea.  I always felt a bit concerned that when clicking "refresh" that the logoff link was a little bit to close for comfort.  You can get general BeTwittered info, and find a link to add it to your iGoogle page >here<

Posted in internet, php, social, twitter | No Comments »

BeTwittered, PHP and file_get_contents

January 20, 2008 – 9:28 am
I spent a bit of time this morning adding to my error handling in BeTwittered. Around 8am there was a bit of a service issue at, I believe, the Twitter server end, but I had no way to confirm it. I was, as my own customer, just getting my own "OOPS, something went wrong" please stand by sort of message. The problem is that I used the PHP file_get_contents() function, which does not return HTTP error codes, and when using Twitters HTTP API, that's key for error handling. To make a long story short: I discovered that, although the function does not return the HTTP status codes, that status DOES get stored in the global variable $http_response_header. Are you geeky enough to want to see how I captured this info? Then read on...

Posted in internet, php, programming, twitter, web | No Comments »

Mobile Version of BeTwittered

January 19, 2008 – 12:58 pm
BeTwittered has been on Google as a homepage gadget for a couple of weeks now. Today I created a mobile version that is more useable on a phone -> http://32hours.com/betwittered. You can follow the link to have a look, even from your computer. This version drops some things like automatic refreshing every few minutes, and is a bit more simplistic in order to be "lighter" for use on a phone. If you run it from your computer, be aware that it's intended for small screens. If you like it and you use Google's homepage, check out BeTwittered for iGoogle! Do you have an iPhone?  If you do, and you check out  BeTwittered, please let me know how it looks.  I don't have one to test on yet and would REALLY appreciate the feedback. :)

Posted in Google, internet, social, twitter, web | No Comments »

Thinking Seriously About an iPhone

January 19, 2008 – 6:33 am
I'm really thinking seriously about getting an iPhone, but only for testing purposes, of course. I would never buy a cool gadget because I'm drawn to cool gadgets like a cat to the other side of the street. OK, so I do want one because they're cool. But I would really like to get my Twitter Gadget (BeTwittered) working on mobile phones, and I really think the iPhone would be a great platform for it. I've already got a large percentage of users on Mac's. Not that iPhone users are necessarily Mac users. But I think that's an indicator, and the Apple customer is generally a devoted, tech-savvy one. Plus, I think I should get an iPhone. If you already use BeTwittered, let me know what you think. Do you also have a mobile device? What kind? You ...

Posted in Google, internet, social, twitter | No Comments »

Like the Google Home Page (iGoogle) and Twitter, Too?

January 16, 2008 – 2:06 am
I've made some more improvements to my Twitter Gadget for Google / iGoogle. Check it out, follow the link to 32hours.com -> The Latest Changes - TwitteGadget for iGoogle

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Twitter iGoogle Gadget - Progress

January 5, 2008 – 5:45 pm
I've spent the better part of my rainy, Southern California Saturday updating, or more accurately, rewriting my Twitter gadget / widget for iGoogle. I'm really happy with it, now. The progress I've made is making me excited. I've learned a bit of AJAX today in order to make some nice changes. Want to have a look? Do you already have a Google account (like GMail) ? Click HERE!->Twitter iGoogle Gadget (32hours.com)

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Do you use Twitter and iGoogle?

January 1, 2008 – 9:26 pm
I've gotten a PHP version of a Google (iGoogle) gadget working.  It follows your friends, and allows you to post, so far. Check it out at 32hours.com, or the direct article link. It's working, and I'll be improving it pretty quickly.

Posted in Google, internet, php, programming, social, twitter, web | No Comments »

Using .htaccess To Redirect Visitors and Search Engines

December 29, 2007 – 12:01 pm
So I learned something new today. I've had this blog at http://robert.arlesnet.com for quite a while, but also had a site I never updated at http://www.arlesnet.com. I had finally decided it made more sense to have all "arlesnet.com" visitors end up at my blog rather than some unmaintained site. I put the code below in the .htaccess file at arlesnet.com. The actual directory location will vary per server, but is often something like a public_html or www directory. As a clue, it should be in the same place as the index file for the site you are trying to redirect.  Also note that files starting with a dot are 'hidden' in *nix... Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} arlesnet.com$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://robert.arlesnet.com/$1 [R=301,L] If you want to use this for your own site, all you need to change is the domain info in the 3rd and 4th lines.  Line 3 is ...

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Limit Firefox Memory Usage - about:config

December 24, 2007 – 9:17 pm
Firefox 3 vs Firefox 2? I checked out Firefox 3 Beta 2 today. It was not stunning, but, wow, did it use a LOT less RAM by default. It reminded me that I hadn't changed the settings to force Firefox to use less RAM. In Firefox 2, you: type 'about:config' into the address bar ->NOT<- http://about.config Add a new key by right clicking in the boring page that comes up, and choosing new|integer, call it: browse.cache.memory.capacity, <enter>, then set the value to: 7500 (play with this, to your liking) restart your Firefox and stand back, sometimes it causes a short on your motherboard. Done. You can go back to about:config and just double click the key to modify it as you please... Anyway. Enough Firefox 3 for me. Very few of my extensions worked. I'll check back later when there are versions ...

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“Terrible, Horrible PHP Tutorial” is coming, slowly, probably..

December 16, 2007 – 4:44 pm
So, I've written a small bit of PHP to pull RSS feeds. Not at all monumental, but I've written a bit, and taken some notes required for site setup (pear installs of XML stuff) My goal is still to create a widget that will work on iGoogle, and be configurable. If nothing else, at least I'll get some more programming familiarity out of this. After all, I don't know who you are and couldn't possibly care what you get out of this. Well, unless I'm reading this. In that case I do care, and I may be actually creating some kind of verbal time-space loop-back by self reference. I hope that wouldn't be painful or cause hair loss.

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