Posts Tagged ‘twextme’

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.

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@bkmcae Explains Twext.me

May 1st, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Ben was the reason we created Twext.me, so it was great to see him take the reins and create this quick video to explain why we did.

Twext.me demo from Ben Martin on Vimeo.

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.

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