Twaddle

A few weekends back I finished implementing OAuth Echo support in Twaddle. This is the new, secure, way for you to use a third party site which communicates with Twitter for you. The classic example of this is photo sharing services such as TwitPic. Previously such services requires you to send them your username / password which isn’t a good idea. Using OAuth Echo you send them an opaque bit of data that uniquely (and securely) identifies the request as coming from you – the third party site then “echos” this data to Twitter to use for authentication.

OAuth Echo support – in conjunction with the new extensible architecture of Twaddle – means that over the course of a few hours I was able to provide TwitPic support within Twaddle. This support allows you to take a new picture with your phone’s camera (for devices with cameras) or to use an existing photo, both with preview support.

Image Upload – Take a new photo or upload a file

Image Upload – Selecting an image

Image Upload – Preview the image

Yesterday the Twitter API team granted Twaddle access to the (newish) XAuth interface. What does that mean? Well it means that one of the biggest criticisms of Twaddle is gone. You’ll recall in previous versions to set up a new account you had to hit “Start” which would launch your browser. You’d then login to the Twitter website which would give you a 7 digit number. That number would need to be remembered and entered back into Twaddle. This process, which is relatively painless on a desktop or web application, was incredibly frustrating on a mobile device. XAuth is designed specifically to address this issue. I think the following screen shots of the new account setup process explain better than I could…

Beginning the XAuth process

Finalising the XAuth process

“But isn’t this going back to username / password combinations which is insecure?” you may ask. Well, no, not really. The username / password combination is sent over a secure channel only once (at the time you fill out this form). Twitter verifies this and then sends back a token which is used for all subsequent requests. This is in fact identical to the OAuth process used in earlier versions the difference is how that token is acquired.

All you really need to know is that signing up with Twaddle is now pain free! Hooray!

So today I just checked the statistics for Twaddle and there are over 2000 users who have allowed Twaddle to communicate with the Twitter servers. Whilst I’d love for this number to be 10,000 and for each of those users to be paying me a fiver, I’m still rather happy with these figures. In order to celebrate this nice little milestone I thought I’d present you with a recent feature I implemented as part of the 0.3 release: Threaded Conversations.

0.3 Preview – Threaded Conversations

Here we can see a conversation I held between my personal account and the @TwaddleWM account. You may notice a very subtle tree structure of the list – this is to indicate the hierarchy of the conversation. This view only works when statuses are properly tagged as replies to another status (which Twaddle and the Twitter website do, but some clients seem to do less reliably). I’m so far finding this feature really useful to manage long running conversations throughout the day (and you can sometimes find some great new people to follow as a result!). This interface can be brought up from any of the other views within Twaddle and allows you to interact with the tweets just like they were in your normal timeline. Expect the interface and how this is rendered to change before the final 0.3 release – this is after all just a preview! If you have any suggestions on improving the layout, I’d love to hear them.

Also, don’t forget to take part in the poll on the right hand side – it’s a great way for you to voice your views on what feature you desperately want included in 0.3 !

Earlier today Twaddle Twaddle ticked over to 200 users. Not too shabby at all. Considering that I’ve had some things going on in my personal life that have prevented me from working on, or evangelising, Twaddle as much as I’d like.

In the same spirit as the 100 user milestone I present a screenshot previewing 0.2.

0.2 Preview – Received Direct Messages

In the last 8 hours the 100th user allowed Twaddle to communicate with Twitter on their behalf. It’s good to see people are finding Twaddle useful.

As my gift on this milestone I present… a screenshot from the 0.2 version of Twaddle.

0.2 Preview – New navigation and @Replies

Anyway, if you have any feedback, suggestions, criticisms or problems, please let me know and I’ll do my best to address your issues.