TwitterGram Web Service

The past couple of days I've been following Dave Winer's Twitters on his progress with Twittergram - In a nutshell it's to the micro-blogging service Twitter what podcasting is to blogging. A 140k post linked to a 200k audio clip. His PuppyGram use-case sample illustrates a possible usage scenario for these mini voice chunks.

Here's an example use-case. You're driving in your car and thinking of your dog at home, alone, missing you (and you missing your bud too of course). So you pick up the cell phone, speed dial the TwitterGram voice service (it doesn't exist yet) and say some reassuring words to your pal.

Now at home you have a special PuppyGram client running on your MacMini or AppleTV or somesuch. Your picture comes on the screen, and the computer barks three or four times to get the attention of your best friend. And then your little message comes on screen.

Okay, that's a trivial example, but Twitter is all about trivial examples. It's the stuff of no importance whatsoever that make us feel nice about being human.

The Twittergram service is up and running today and the docs with sample code needed to get started available on his blog here. And Paulo Fierro whipped up a Twit O'Gram player to keep track of the Twittograms posted to the twitogram user on twitter. How many t's can one use in one sentence...

Here's a quick and dirty Ruby sample to post a Twittergram from your desktop :

require "xmlrpc/client"

class Settings
  Username = "twitterusername"
  Password = "twitterpassword"
end

class TwitterGram
  def newPost(username, password, mp3, postToMyAct, metaData)
    server = XMLRPC::Client.new("rpc.twittergram.com", "/RPC2", 80)
    server.call('twittergram.newPost', username, password, mp3, postToMyAct, metaData)
  end
end

begin
  mp3 = File.read("twittergram.mp3")
  client = TwitterGram.new
  metaData = { :title => 'Twittergram Test'}
  result = client.newPost(Settings::Username, Settings::Password, mp3, true, metaData)
  puts result
rescue Exception => e
  puts "Error:"
  puts e
end

Other Links - TwitterGram Web Service - A simple API for posting short MP3s to Twitter.

Powered by Qumana