Future of Tweetie 2 for Mac beta in doubt

MacHeist buyers who were promised access to the beta for Tweetie 2, a popular desktop Twitter client for Mac, may not see it for a long time if ever, thanks to doubts raised by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and some light-hearted but vague tweets from Tweetie developer Loren Brichter, TechCrunch has reported…

Via MacNN.

I decided to move on from Tweetie, and ponied up the cash for Echofon last night after trying out nearly all the options available as native Mac OS X desktop clients (Tweetdeck and Seesmic don’t qualify in my book). It’s the one client that’s the most powerful, and implemented the best in my humble opinion.

As for Tweetie, all I can say is… Way to take the money (from a lot of people) and run, @atebits…

Twitter: ‘We aren’t actively planning’ Tweetie 2 for Mac

Tweetie for Mac’s long-awaited version 2 is no longer ‘actively’ planned by the company.

Via Macworld.

That’s a bummer. Tweetie was the one Mac desktop Twitter app that showed the most promise. Simple, yet powerful — at least it was for its time — before Loren Brichter started working for Twitter…

The right thing to do would be turn it over, (better yet — sell it) to another indie developer to continue working on. Simply letting it die just plain stinks, especially for all the people who laid out the $15 for it.

AppleScriptTweet Updated for Use With “Twurl”

Thanks to Karl and Matt letting me know about Twurl, my AppleScriptTweet script now works with OAuth authentication. Here’s how to get it working for yourself…

1. Download the updated script: http://jimmitchell.org/files/AppleScriptTweet.zip

2. Use the Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/) to install the “twurl” rubygem – a Twitter-friendly version of curl:

$ sudo gem install twurl

3. Create a new application at dev.twitter.com to obtain an API key. After logging into Twitter with the account you want to use AppleScriptTweet with, go to http://dev.twitter.com/apps/new, and fill out the form:

  • Application Name: Anything (but must be unique, may take an attempt or two)
  • Description: AppleScriptTweet – tweet from AppleScript (or add your own description)
  • Application Website: http://jimmitchell.org/projects/applescripttweet/
  • Organization: http://jimmitchell.org/
  • Application Type: Client
  • Default Access type: Read & Write

4. Accept the Terms & Conditions, and copy down the “consumer key” and “consumer secret” that appear on the next page.

5. Go to the twurl github webpage and follow the instructions for authenticating in Terminal: http://github.com/marcel/twurl/

6. Change the property values in the AppleScriptTweet script with AppleScript Editor:

  • property theAccount : “YourTwitterAccount” — this is the Twitter account you created the app for in step #2
  • property theApp : “YourApplicationName” — this is the application name you used in step #2

Save the script and that’s it. You should be good to go now.

Note: I cannot (and won’t) answer support questions regarding the use of twurl. It’s not my code, so I can’t do anything if it breaks your system. The one thing I can shed some light on is that the “twurl authenticate…” command in the Terminal should be entered all on one line.

Any questions about AppleScriptTweet should be posted in the comments here. Enjoy!

New AppleScript to Post to Twitter

applescripttweet.png

I’ve hacked together a quick little AppleScript that will let you post quick one-off tweets to Twitter without the hassle of dealing with a full-on client.

I originally created it to fire off quick to-do’s to Remember the Milk. Combined with FastScripts from Red Sweater Software, it takes me 2 seconds to get that to-do reminder out of the way and back to work. It also keeps me from browsing through my Twitter feed, which my ADD nature tends to want to do.

If it sounds like something you could use, go check it out. The code is totally open source, so add to it as you have need. If you come up with something cool, let me know.