Most people, now have multiple social networking accounts. so what do you do if you want to update all of them? Most would just log in to there preferred site and just do a status update, I think that this takes to long and i could spend that time coding or writing another post, so i decided to consolidate everything to my blog.
Now I have been using WP plug called ‘Post to Twitter’. Its very simple you put your login info into it and click test, and its all set to go, simple enough write?
Next is hooking up myspace to twitter, very easy, click on the link on your home page ‘get synced’ and fill out the form and your connected, next you would test by making a post to your blog, then check your update on myspace, now it should have updated. I didn’t have any issues with it updating my status at all, I cant guarantee that it will work for you, but why not try.
After that I hooked up my facebook. I tried 2 different apps, the official twitter app and the ‘Selective Twitter Status’. I liked the selective one better because i didn’t have to use my user name and password for twitter, I really don’t like to give social networking password to other social networking apps, Its just add another link that could fail.For the selective app, all you have to do is install the app, allow it to post, on your next post add #fb and it will post it to your status.
This setup may be useful for Blogs and people who just want to post to one place. This is a one way update, I post to my blog then my WP plugin Posts to Twitter, next Facebook and Myspace get updated, and thats exactly what i wanted this to do.
Tag Archives: software
Optimizing your social networking updates
Fun with user agents
I wanted to share this fun and interesting tool that I use and to test certain aspects of some of my applications, User Agent Switcher Is a Firefox plug in that changes the user agent to the one selected. For those who don’t know, a user agent is the name that the browser gives to the website to make sure it is compatible, another use is for search engine crawlers to identifies them to the site that they visited and added your site.
My original use for it was to bypass a governments website restriction to IE only so i searched for the best possible way to change my user agent, there are other ways to hack Firefox to have the same out come but takes a little bit of know how, so i found user agent switcher for this purpose, next i turn it on and change my user agent to IE 7, then go to the website with that restriction, and i get through with out a problem, this doesnt always work and may crash your browser so try that at your own risk.
Now for the fun part, ever wanted to see what some sites show google but not you, So download the ltest list of user agents here, import it and change your user agent to google’s bot and explore to see what sites show google or yahoo, or change your user agent to some ancient browser, like MSIE 3.0; AOL 4.0;, see what sites depend on such things to work, you would be surprised to find that Facebook and MySpace depend on user agents and ask you to upgrade your browser, other sites just say that support for your browser is coming soon, or get back at those people that look at browser statistics from sites and you start seeing profanity driven browsers…
Another Use i found was for work, there are a few web applications that we use and they dont play well with Firefox, so i load up User Switcher Agent and turn on IE 7 and load the apps up and they start working……..well almost one, worked fine, the other…..the one that I really wanted working Bombed and froze Firefox……..well you can’t win them all but at least I tried.
So Try out User Agent Switcher and add it to your toolbox.
twitter script for linux
Tagged as command line, cURL, script, software, twitter
Well let me give you an interesting script i found on Tech Republic………..
Its how to Tweet from the command line using cURL, its very simple and to the point….just like a script should be
tweet.sh
#!/bin/sh
tweet="${@}"
user="username"
pass="sekret"
if [ $(echo "${tweet}" | wc -c) -gt 140 ]; then
echo "FATAL: The tweet is longer than 140 characters!"
exit 1
fi
curl -k -u ${user}:${pass} -d status="${tweet}" https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" == "0" ]; then
echo "Successful tweet!"
fi
to us it just type this
$ ~/bin/tweet "social server rules"
the only other thing to worry about is you have to escape “?”, “!” -> “\?”, “\!”
Webmin, next best thing to sliced bread
I personally hate trying to configure some Applications on linux machines, especially ones that have very cryptic config files, or there so big it takes you half an hour to get to the bottom, but no more hassle with Webmin as your remote server management solution. I have been using webmin for about 4 months now and I am quite pleased with the program, It is very simple to use no hassle setup of the interface and you can customize and build new modules for new applications or deamons.
ignore the IE i took the picture on my work PC
Ignore those high CPU times i was compiling glibc on my server at the time of this screen shot, but lets get back to what makes it a great tool for me.
The original reason i installed webmin is to beable to configure squid on the fly because of the need to test it from an outside connection but the uses grew as i kept exploring all the options. So after i setup squid i started looking into the apache, dns, dhcpd, and ssh server. So the apache 2 configureation was so easy compared to manuelly setting up the conf file and the enabled and installed sites, and a better understanding on how to configure apache the right way instead of the haphazard way of looking at examples and hopefully getting the config correct, with out creating security holes. I really couldnt tell you how I got by with out webmin. The ssh, dhcpd, mysql, send mail, samba, where just as easy to setup as apache and squid, i would recomend this to any one doing any kind of server admin or running a dev system that needs monitoring or constant changes and you dont have access to the physical terminal all the time.
There are a few things i didnt like so far, for starters I would like to be able to have a custom side bar with the links that i need only, but i think that can be taken care of with a little bit of editing the source code or creating a them. Next issue i would like changed is a better comand line interface, The one under Others comand shell does what it says it does and executes the command but I wish it emulated a shell better but i guess thats what the ssh login is for. another thing i would change would be the system info page Yes its very minimilistic and gets the info that you need, but i would like a little more info that may be helpful, Like keeping the Uptime on that page , yes i know its there when your system has been up for more than an hour but less than a day, other wise it disapears, I would also like to add how many proccesses are running at that moment and maybe the IP addresses assigned to the network interfaces would be helpul as well. I really couldnt think of any thing after that, but these are jsut cosmetic changes for the most part and the issues wont stop me from using this great tool. I have to thank the fine People at http://www.webmin.com/index.html for creating and maintaining this fine tool.
Work, The Internet, Your Browsing
Have you ever had that feeling that someone is standing over your shoulder, while browsing at work? Or someone sends you a link in your corp mail, you click and you get that wonderful message, “this site has been blocked by <your big brother software> for <some reason that its not related to work>”…… Every time i have gotten a message like that, my brain goes “uh oh” knowing that in some log that it recorded your user name time and the site you were trying to get to!! So you think that this is another mark on your flawless company record…but even worse is it keeps all the sites that you go to regardless if its blocked or not…….So are you getting paranoid now? Well don’t be unless you know what your doing is against company policy like looking at NSFW sites or other social networking sites. But it still bugs me that my Digital Privacy is still being infringed upon……I know that Company’s put in filters and proxy s for extra security to keep out the viruses malware and spam from the internet, But do you really need Draconian laws to help with security? isnt there a better way, maybe Teach your emplyees, good browsing habits, what phising is or social engineering, and whats acceptable for work browsing and sample sites…… It may be years before major company realize that there internet policy is failing due to people circumventing there security, which is a Big problem that no one seems to realize, so Let me tell you some interesting ideas to circumvent your employers draconian internet policy……………… There are a few different ways to get by there security, depending on what is in your way. Most company uses a Proxy to allow people to access to the internet which usually have some sort of login, some use a Web filter software added to the proxy to allow you access to a few sites that the company feels you need access to, others use just the filter and some use something called a transparent proxy or gateway that has some sort of filtering software, there may be others ways for security to impede on your web surfing. Now for the Good stuff, how to get around your works web security… Remember I do not Support breaking the law or circumventing critical network security or breaking your company internet usage policy…Basically I take no Responsibility for your actions. Read the Policy and understand it because knowing your rights as an employee is your responsibility not HRs……….This is for informational and educational purposes only!
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