TwinterFace

Updates, updates and updates

Wed, 25 May 2011 11:56:19 +0200

Hi,

While Lucas is busy with the new backend, I wanted to make the current system a lot faster. So I looked into all the database queries and optimized the whole system. Since the speed is a lot better we’ve seen a lot of new users using twinterface and we’re really happy about that. :)

Next to the speed I started with a statistics module for the second time. The first time I was struggling with javascript libraries that where not really good, so I decided to go HTML5 for the new ones. They are online since yesterday and we want to know what you think!

Twitter is going to change something in the permission model of their API, so I made a few changes to the authentication backend so you can easily reauthorize your account when needed, I will post an update soon about that.

Cheers,

Harold

Great news about reinforcement!

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:31:38 +0100

Hi,

Great news, we finally found a developer, his name is Lucas Luitjes (and likes to be known as captain awesome ;-)) He worked on several projects, one of them is symbaloo. Lucas has great ideas for improvement. Today we started redesigning the complete backend and I’m going to start on some new elements of the frontend.

That’s it for now, more soon!

Grtz,

Harold

Back after a winter break

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:22:13 +0100

Hi,

It’s been silent for a month and there’s a reason for that. Last week I got back from a 3 week holliday to my favorite part of the world, Asia. We traveled around Malaysia and started on Borneo to go diving around Mabul and Sipadan. For me that is the best way to reset myself. Didn’t take my phone or my computer, just a sketchbook and some pencils. The sketchbook is still almost empty, and that is a good thing. :)

Soon I’ll continue the springcleaning so the biggest flaws that irritate me will be fixes. But not after I’m done with a smaller project:

Since January 1st my girlfriend is fully self-employed. She’s an artist and makes paintings and birth announcement cards, but the one thing she fully dedicated herself to is making sleeves for iPhones, iPads and 11” MacBook Airs. She has been making these sleeves for over a year and since the MacBook Air she needed more time to be able to make more of them, so she quit her job. I’ll be finishing her webshop in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you need a sleeve, checkout http://jolioriginals.com

And still the question (more than ever):

I need a python/java developer, if you are one or know one, please let me know, we really need some extra hands to finish this project!

Grtz,

Harold

Spring cleaning started early

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 11:53:28 +0100

Hi All,

Last week I started with a code cleaning spree, there where a lot of almost duplicate functions. And better, right now javascript does a lot of calls to the internal API, I’ve redesigned it so almost all calls will be combined. I just started recoding some main features and started implementing more HTML5 features, I hope to finish this update somewhere before the end of january.

One big new function will be more-than-three-columns. If you have feature requests, please let me know. :-)

And still the question:

If you know a developer who knows his pro languages (python, java, RoR) (and has experience with google app engine), please let them send an email to help@twinterface.com.

Cheers,

Harold (@hsl)

Maintenance weekend pt2

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:30:45 +0100

Hi,

Solved the main problems with a temporary fix, serverload is down to more acceptable levels, but it’s not good enough, so I decided to change the client so that it bundles calls that it’s doing seperate at the moment.

I hope to get this update out within a week.

Cheers,

Harold

Maintenance weekend,...

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:02:47 +0100

Hi,

As you’ve probably noticed TwinterFace has been (and still is) quite slow this weekend. I changed to maintenance mode quite a number of times to optimize the database server. I’m not finished with that just yet, The load of the database server is still way too high and I want to get that under control.

Sorry for the trouble. I’ll post an update here when I’m done.

Harold

Time, Resources and the Future,..

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:01:00 +0100

Hi,

A long time since I’ve added an item to the blog, I will try to do this more often, but time is the biggest problem :). Last month I released the completely renewed interface, and some smaller updates will be released soon.

I thought it would be about time to explain about TwinterFace. I started TwinterFace about 2 years ago. I designed and built the biggest part of the application, but got a lot help from @maxvw, he’s built the base of the javascript over a year ago. Next to that I got a lot of advice for the interface from @jasperhauser.

I have a online marketing job at an Dutch Internet Provider (XS4ALL), That’s where I work 4 days a week. Next to that I’m studying part-time and working on TwinterFace. So almost all my spare time goes into this project, and still loving it a lot. During the last two years I got a lot of feedback from a number of active users (thanks a lot!) and that feedback made TwinterFace into what it is now.

So what about the future? A friend of mine is going to help me making twinterface bigger than what it is now. Since his role is not a technical one and my time is not endless we we need a developer. What I built now works, but to make it a bigger and more scalable application we need to built the backend in a slightly other way.

So If you know a developer who knows his pro languages (python, java, RoR) and has ) a bit) experience with google app engine, please let them send an email to help@twinterface.com. Since we’re a dutch company based in Amsterdam we prefer someone that lives in the Netherlands.

Cheers!

Harold

Completely new interface soon!

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:56:22 +0100

Hi There,

Ever since we’ve opened up for public beta we have been working really hard to get a completely new interface out. it’s not ready for realease yet, but we want to show you what it looks like.

We changed the complete flow and integrated everything in one window, we added some extra settings and we’re busy adding statistics.

Not all elements are finished but enjoy!

TwinterFace is open as Public Beta!

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:59:00 +0100

The last 2 weeks I had little sleep, there was a lot on my to-do-list and today I decided it was enough and I launched the public beta. We worked hard to get the backend completely ready, it has been stable for months now.

I kept postponing the public beta because I had a lot of things I wanted to do better and smarter, but sometimes you just have to launch it as it is, it looks great, runs stable, and I’m using it as my only twitter account, so why couldn’t you?

In the release we released today we have a couple of new interface elements and we built a couple of new features:

we now show userinfo when clicking on the username (with possibility to follow/unfollow)
next to shortr.me we now support bit.ly for short url’s
better system to create subusers
better system to add twitteraccounts when you already have an twinterface account
feedback form
all emails sent by system are now HTML mails
slightly new homepage
and most important, open for everyone.

And now?

Tomorrow we start working on great new stuff and in the meantime we want you all to use TwinterFace as much as you can, tell us about bugs you see and the features you want!

Tell all your contacts. Please spread the word. https://twinterface.com/

Now, time for a beer and a long night of sleep.

Harold *HL / @hsl

And we're back!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:15:00 +0100

We’re working hard on the new release Mosaic, this is going to bring a lot of new features. We just released a “micro-in-between” update, this update has a few small enhancements.

slightly improved interface, optimized for 13,3” (1280px x 800px) screens
the direct messages collumn now also show your own sent messages
and a lot of fixes in the core

For all of you who are waiting for an invite, when Mosaic is released we will send out a lot of invites.

new core updated

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:54:00 +0200

Hi!

Today we updated TwinterFace so it uses the new core, it has an even better python backend than we where testing last week. We’ve sent out some more invites and we will send out more in the next few days, depending of what little glitches you guys come up with.

What’s changed:

The core is new, tweets are now being cached and thus the system is a lot faster.
There is a new action window, this makes it easier to reply, retweet, DM or in a next update, forward tweets. (we also have enough space to build scheduled tweets and multitweets in).
You can now delete your own posts and DM’s.
You can now favorite and unfavorite posts.

What do we have in the planning:

scheduled tweets
integrated pictureservice
groups
forwarding
and lots of other fun stuff that’s possible due to the new core, but more on that later.

If you want to join the (private) beta testers, please follow @twinterface_ and leave a tweet, every now and then we will post invite keys.

If you are one of the lucky beta testers and find a glitch, bug, special unintended feature, please let us know on twitter or send us an email.

Everything is going to be new.

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:15:34 +0200

A few weeks ago I’ve told you all that we built a new core and that it was running fine in the background. Well it still is. It’s awesome and makes lots of new stuff possible. What does it do? Too much for one blogpost, but the main thing is, we now cache tweets, this so the interface is going to be smoother, faster and it has lots of other advantages.

Last few weeks Max and I have been working on the frontend to make that work with the new backend, that doesn’t completely work yet, but we are getting along.

There where two big javascript errors, both caused by a new better javascript engine, but since it had to show a lot of tweets, we had to make some adjustments to make sure your browsers wouldn’t crash. One of them is completely fixed, the other one caused some interface trouble, so will be dealt with later today.

The most important change for you is that you now won’t get a tweet update window on reply, but you get a action window where you can reply, retweet, direct message and in a few weeks, forward,… :-) The last is a very important to us, so it’s not being implemented in the next update. But along with new follower options it’s going to be ready in a few weeks.

Thanks for all your positive reactions and for your patience.

Harold

shortr.me

Tue, 26 May 2009 02:08:05 +0200

Small extra feature, we implemented the http://shortr.me url-trimming service. After typing an url the url will be trimmed automatically. Stats of the trimmed urls will be available later.

Have fun!

control the content

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:58:00 +0200

Yesterday we pushed an update where you can change the column’s content, you can now choose different types:

search
my tweets
friends stream
@mentions
direct messages

As extra you can now change the searchterm to whatever you want, it’s filtered so you won’t see your own tweets, and your mentions.

We also fixed some minor css bugs and a preferences bug.

The cookie system is a bit better now, but we don’t have a durable solution yet, if you use one browser and/or computer you will stay logged in. We’re working on a better solution.

If you find a bug, please tweet it, or send it to bugs@twinterface.com

Pictures & url-trimmers

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:32:58 +0200

We’re almost ready with the implementation of shortr.me, in a real cool intuitive way, If that is what you like we can implement other trimmers. Now the question, which trimmers do you use and do you want us to add? there are quite a lot of them, but not all of them feature an API.

shortr.me
tinyurl
shor.ter.net
kots.nu
shorturl.com
and loads more

And we found a cool way to display pictures from the three known picture sites:

twitpic
mobypic
tweetphoto

We also want to implement the uploading of pictures to theses services, there’s only one problem, all of these services require the password and username to be sent in cleartext, and since we don’t store the username’s & passwords (but use Twitter’s OAuth API) that’s going to be tricky.

So the plan is, we first implement both the url-trimmer, and the displaying of the pictures, and as soon as one of these three picture services implements OAuth, we will implement that. So If you want to post pictures with TwinterFace, make sure you ask these services for it on their support sites. :-)

Update!

Sat, 09 May 2009 01:50:04 +0200

Just updated the whole site, on some pages the entire interface changed, on other pages only small parts changed.

New features:

login by cookie (so, unless you log out, you don’t have to login anymore).
remove extra users from a twitteraccount (user keeps account).
new frontpage.

Bugs fixed:

what-are-you-doing popup is now visible on small screens.
lots of small css & javascript issues.

Almost finished:

custom searches
multitweet (one message to multiple twitter accounts at once)

Tomorrow we will send out a new batch of invites, If you want one don’t be affraid to ask. If you find bugs or have feature requests, please tweet to @twinterface_

Just opened this blog.

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:18:11 +0200

Hello tweeps,

We just started this blog to keep you all posted with the updates we’re doing on twinterface, and especially the updates that won’t fit in 140 characters.

First of all, We are really happy that a lot of beta testers are testing TwinterFace, we’re not getting a lot of feedback, so that’s a good sign.

Later today I will post something about all the fun stuff that’s just around the corner.

Harold