Twitter Quick Reply

June 24th, 2008

A quick bookmarklet that I made for Asa Dotzler. If you've ever visited a tweet, on Twitter, directly, and had wished to immediately reply to its author you probably found it to be quite convoluted (typically this is the case if you subscribe to services like Summize or Tweetscan. It usually involves copying the username, visiting the reply screen, and then typing/pasting in the relevant parts to make the @reply. Instead you can just use the following bookmarklet to make that easy.

First, Drag this to your bookmark bar: Twitter Reply

Second, visit a tweet: http://twitter.com/jeresig/statuses/841204003

Then hit the bookmarklet and you should be taken to the reply screen with "@jeresig " (or whatever the appropriate username is) already pre-filled in. Enjoy!

P.S. As a bonus it maintains the http/https URL protocol, as well.

Tags: twitter, javascript

5 Comments on 'Twitter Quick Reply'

@Twitter

February 2nd, 2008

I'm not sure why, but I've become hooked on Twitter. I find it to be interesting because I don't get hooked on new social network-like sites very easily, but I'm stuck in here pretty good. Here's some random thoughts that I've pulled together concerning my use of the site:

• I really enjoy the 140 character constraint. I feel as if I become more creative in my posts and choose my content more wisely. I'm intrigued by the concept of Microblogging as a whole - the result feeling completely different from normal blogging.
• Being able to update it from your cell phone, in a pinch, is absolutely key. This is a major differentiator from normal blogging.
• It took me a while to realize this but the major differentiator of Twitter, compared to just straight-up blogging, is that you have a feed reader integrated into your blogging engine. It's such a smart and obvious concept, once you think about it. It definitely makes the cost of starting a Twitter competitor that much higher (since you have to build a network in order for it to become useful).
• I've often wondered if a distributed twitter would be possible - more decentralized like normal blogging. I think it would work, as long as your blogging engine was also a feed reader (actively pulling in your friends content).

Follow Me!

If you're interested, you should follow me on Twitter - I'll probably follow you back if you talk about tech/JavaScript-related stuff. I tend to post minor things that don't make it to my blog (stuff about book writing, programming, Mozilla, traveling, etc.) so it ends up being a good source of micro information.

Bitlog

I casually mentioned that I was working on a Twitter clone in my JavaScript Pretty Date post. Honestly, I haven't really touched it since last May. I figure that if I don't get people looking at it now, it'll never get released. You can check it out here, I call it Bitlog. I have registration closed right now - if you're interested in trying it out ping me with your desired username and I'll hook you up.

It's horribly buggy and incomplete (at this point, it's nothing more than a crippled blogging engine - no networking or mobile aspects) but someday I hope to wrap it up and release it, open source, for all to consume. The Ajaxy bits are pretty slick (one-page login, logout, posting, etc.) - I hope to put some more effort into them at some point. It's in PHP 4 (compatible with 5, as well) and has no dependencies - so it should be stupid simple to deploy to the server of your choice. If anyone is interested in hacking on the code, please let me know, I'd appreciate that as well.

Tags: bitlog, twitter, php, blog

16 Comments on '@Twitter'