Since the previous post on this subject I came across twitter which allows users to be updated by their friends “tweets”, essentially short blog posts of less that 140 characters. The interesting feature is that you can submit and receive updates from your mobile at normal text messaging rates.
The model goes that if account ‘A’ is updated then mobile on account ‘B’ gets a text message. What’s really great is developing applications to work with it is made easy by the open api.
My previous solution only allowed for very short truncated messages in amongst text formatted as a reminder. Twitter however would allow me to send messages up to 140 characters and it would be much quicker than setting up a google reminder to go off in one minute.
So after a little messing with python, dbus and pidgin I give you version 01a. As of yet it hasn’t got a name so drop a comment and help me name my program!
The only downside so far is being in the UK limits me to only 250 messages a month from tweeter, but I’ll just switch plugins to the gSMS based one if I run out. At the moment it’s command line so don’t expect a GUI. Usage is simple run it and your prompted for your twitter username and password. Once it’s running all messages will be forwarded to your mobile when your status isn’t set to ‘available’.
Naming suggestions so far:
TwitterPy
SMS-PidginPy
tweetymcpigeonsnake