Monthly Archives: April 2008

Twitterator loves DabbleDB

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I’ve made a few tweaks to Twitterator over the last couple days, the most significant of which is a measure of compatibility with DabbleDB. If you create a basic DabbleDB database with a single column of twitter usernames, you can specify the URL to the .txt or .csv versions of your database and Twitterator will add them to your list of Twitter friends.

This new feature should really help if you want to provide an easy way for a bunch of people to subscribe to a set of twitter users all at once. You could maintain, for example, a list of K-12 science teacher twitter users. Make as many groups as you want and simply provide the URLs in a blog post, on a wiki page, or in a Google Docs document.

Leave a comment if there’s another feature you’d like. I’ll see what I can do to put it in. Please let me know if you find a bug.

Twitterator launched: Come and play

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I may attract the trademark police for this, but so be it.

It seemed like an innocent enough question at the time, but when Steve Dembo (teach42) posted a tweet last week looking for a way to import a list of Twitter names to follow I decided to run with it. It seemed like a straightforward programming challenge, and after a little twittering back and forth with Dave Briccetti I had it pretty much worked out in my head.

Twitterator, then, is a really simple web application that takes a list of twitter usernames and allows you to follow them in one fell swoop. Take a look and see what you think. I have to warn you though. This is a pretty basic CGI script, and it’s not going to be particularly fast. It depends on Twitter.com’s servers being available which can be a bit of a crapshoot. Using Twitterator may cause dizziness, shortness of breath, locusts, giant meteors, and (wait for it) sexual dysfunction. Tell you doctor if you’re using Twitterator. Don’t taunt Twitterator!

I think this could be pretty useful for training sessions. For example, you could keep a list of twitter usernames in a file on the Internet somewhere and use that URL to follow those people. You could keep lists organized by academic subject or whatever else works for you. Once the file exists at a certain URL, a bunch of people could start following those people within minutes of creating their Twitter accounts. You can also paste in a bunch of usernames manually from a blog post, wiki page, or some other source. I tried to make it as bulletproof as reasonably possible, but you’ll have to ensure that the usernames are listed one per line.

Feel free to leave suggestions for improvements or creative uses in the comments. I hope everyone finds Twitterator useful. It’s fun to exercise my programming chops once in a while, and if this brings Dembo one step closer to world domination then it’s all been worth it.

Update: All Twitterator links have been updated to point to the new URL.

Improved Flickr: Now with video!

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Seen on TechCrunch:

Heads up YouTube, Flickr announced today that it has added video capabilities. Note that for now only Pro subscribers can upload video. This was just in time for me, because I was trying to decide how I was going to share a short video that I took on my recent Hawaii vacation of the “Sensitive plant” (Mimosa pudica). Problem solved! I just uploaded it and added it to the collection of my vacation photos. The video plays seamlessly alongside my photos and integrates really well with the whole Flickr experience.

I’ve never felt like jumping into YouTube in a big way because I just don’t shoot that much video. This new Flickr feature is perfect for me. I’ll be really curious to see if it takes off. By the way, I shot this video with my new Canon G9 digital camera. It takes amazing still pictures, and the video is really impressive too.

My new favorite survey tool

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I’ve been using a variety of online survey tools for quite a few years now including Zoomerang, SurveyMonday, and KeySurvey. My new favorite is SurveyGizmo.

We’ve been increasing the use of online surveys greatly in my district this year. We love how easy it is to gather feedback following a staff meeting, from parents and others during a curriculum adoption, or as a customer satisfaction instrument for my technology department. Here’s what I really like about SurveyGizmo:

  • The SurveyGizmo interface is full of tasty Web 2.0 goodness. Various options and settings open without a full page reload which makes building a survey much more like a desktop application. The look and feel overall is clean and modern in contrast to many of the online tools which look a bit clunky to me.
  • The SurveyGizmo enterprise account provides 20 separate survey users. This will enable each school and district office department to have their own account.
  • Here’s a huge one for me: they have a full API! In particular, I’m excited to see that you can pass information into a SurveyGizmo survey from another web form or via a web link. I’ve been looking for a way to use an online survey to collect customer satisfaction data as my tech department resolves trouble tickets for staff members. The API would really make that easier.
  • Other features of note: full support for branching surveys with really complex logic (can even use regular expression matching for full geek compatibility), tons of built-in question types including some I haven’t seen anywhere else, private domain name, and many more really cool advanced features.

So I’d say give it a try. Full disclosure: the SurveyGizmo links in this post are affiliate links.

Comcast rolls out fatter pipes

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According to USA Today, Comcast is planning to spread a little broadband love to its customers in Minneapolis/St. Paul this year. In an effort to compete with Verizon and its FiOS service, Comcast will roll out 50 Mbps download/5 Mbps upload service. They say they’re planning to go to 100 Mbps over the next two years and 160 Mbps after that.

The most obvious application for all that bandwidth is downloading all manner of media files. But what about online learning? With that much bandwidth, full-screen, full-motion videoconferencing is a gimme. 3D multiuser virtual worlds? Yep. Facebook 24×7? Probably. How much bandwidth does your entire district have?