Posts Tagged ‘SMS’

Twext.me Now Uses OAUTH To Access Twitter Accounts

December 2nd, 2009 - Jeff Turner

When we first launched Twext.me, Twitter was in the early stages of their OAUTH launch. There were a few hitches when we made our first attempts to initiate, so we decided to simply require users to input their Twitter username and password.

The recent surge in Twitter spam has people feeling sketchy about giving anyone their password, so we decided to go ahead and implement this more secure way of accessing your Twitter account. We will never see your password.  This is a good thing.

Convert your existing Twitter accounts inside Twext.me

You may convert your existing Twitter accounts by logging into Twext.me and clicking on the “Manage Twitter Accounts” tab. This will take you to a page that will look like this:

reauthorizetwitter

Click on Re-Authorize with Twitter. You will then be taken to twitter to give Twext.me authorization to access your data. We use this access to get a better look at the data inside your account. We will never send any messages out via your account. Ever. The authorization on the Twitter side will look like this:

twitteroauth

When you set up a new account, the process is similar, but the page will look slightly different. The username field is required so we can help you easily keep track of multiple Twitter accounts, should you choose to do so.

authorizetwitter

Many have requested this in the past, so we’re happy it’s now live. Hopefully this will encourage more to use this free service. And remember, if you want your text messages to come via standard SMS, once you’ve set up your accounts, just text TWEXTME to 41411.

Twext.me Has A New “True” SMS Option

June 11th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

If you’ve been with Twext.me from the beginning, you know that we’ve been using the various mobile carrier email-to-text options to deliver your Twitter mentions vis SMS. This worked fine, but most of the carriers generated a unique short code for each notification we sent. This resulted in each message looking as if it were coming from a unique sorce, like this:

img_0003

If you recieved a lot of mentions, the Twext.me updates would dominate your text message screen and require you to delete each one individually. This was annoying at best.

Many of the newest smart phones “thread”  SMS messages that come in under one SMS short code. But getting a short code for Twext.me would have been cost prohibitive. And since this is a free service… that wasn’t an option.

Enter TextMarks.com.

Yesterday we used the TextMarks.com api and can now offer a standard SMS option without going through email. This will allow smart phones to thread the Twext.me updates, like this:

img_0004

All of the individual Twext.me updates will be shown under the single 41411 short code and can be easily cleared if needed. This method requires one additional step in the sign up process.

To take advantage of this option, you must send TWEXTME to 41411 to initiate your subscription. This gives us permission to send SMS to your phone. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to go.

Personally, I had switched from individual messages sent via SMS to a summary message being sent to me on Twitter via DM. With this new option, I have switched back to the individual SMS messages and it works like a charm. Of course, for this to remain free, we all have to put up with the advertising messages, but we think the threading ability is worth it.

Let us know your thoughts.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Twext.me Updates – SMS Alert Options, Pausing

April 20th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

That didn’t take long. One weekend of live testing was all it took to figure out that some changes needed to be made if “power users” were going to find any benefit to the Twext.me service.  Ben Martin and Derek Massey both sent in their requests for updates. Ben requested that we use the Twitter screen names in the notifications, instead of real names. So we made that change. I agree, when I’m in Twitter mode, I recognize people’s Twitter handles more easily than I do their names.

Derek suggested that we provide an option to only track true replies, instead of an static default to a universal mention. So, we’ve added that capability. This will be presented when you set up a new Twitter account or when you’re editing an existing Twitter account. Each Twitter account your tracking can be set differently. The default setting is for both “true replies” and “mentions” to be tracked. See below.

smsoptions

You’ll notice that there is also an option to have the alerts sent in “digest” form. This is an option I requested because I often have many mentions in a short period of time. The individual alerts was simply annoying. I have set my updates to come to me in digest form. A digest alert tells you how many mentions you received and who mentioned you. It will look something like this:

digestsms

Finally, you can now “pause” you alerts with a simple direct message (DM) to Twextme. What was as annoying as the number of updates, was getting updates while I was sitting at my computer actively engaged with Twitter. So, to pause the alerts, simply send a DM to Twextme with the word “off.” Turn turn updates back on, send a DM to Twextme with the word “on.” (no quotation marks)

We have a few more changes coming tomorrow. Let us know your thoughts.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Twext.me – Twitter Mentions To SMS Text

April 17th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Today we launched Twext.me to an extremely limited group of testers.

twextme_logo300

Ben Martin, the Zen Master of Association Social Networking, approached me a few weeks ago about a need he was filling with a mashup of several different online services. The need was simple. Ben wanted to be notified via SMS Text message anytime there was a mention of @bkmcae on Twitter. Since this is a seemingly logical function not supported on Twitter, I was surprised something like this didn’t exist in the wild. After some research, we determined there was really only one service similar, Tweettrak. The difference, Tweettrack sends your notice via direct message to your twitter account.

As a heavy user of Twitter, I know having mentions sent to me via direct message is not an optimal solution. I want my private direct messages to be distinct from my mentions. So, on Wednesday, April 15 we began to build Twext.me and two days later we have it up for testing.

I’ve had it running since this afternoon and I can already tell some major changes are going to be required to make this a service that heaver twitter users might find valueable. My phone was bombarded by text messages today. I did a quick look and in the last 24 hours, Ben has had 42 mentions on Twitter. In that same time period, I ( @respres ) have 90 mentions. I haven’t talked to Ben yet, but each mention coming in as an individual SMS Text was a bit overwhelming for me. So, right off the bat, we have a few changes to make.

Here are two things we’ll need to do pretty quick:

  • A pause button. Twext.me needs a pause button or a way to schedule when you want the updates to occur. For example, I don’t want to get updates while I’m at my computer and able to engage directly with Twitter.
  • A digest option. If 6 people retweet the same information, I don’t need six differnt text messages. Even if the information is different, I’m really only looking for an alert that indicates that I should go take a look.

I know the service will be a lot more valuable to me when those two items are incorporated into the site. Stay tuned. More to come.

Voice To Text – A Google Voice Example

March 31st, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Amy Broghamer engaged me on Facebook a few moments ago and had a “few” questions about the Google Voice service.

Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

img_0794

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?