building with twitter4r

Wow is this thing impressive... i love it!   I’ve been searching for a good twitter plugin/gem.  Needed a way to hook into twitter without much legwork. Excellent resource,. 100% Twitter REST API coverage. It does it all, public/private timeline, status updates, the works. This is going to frickin’ fun!

To install it: sudo gem install twitter4r

I DID have to configure it a bit more for my needs though. When pulling in user statuses’, doesn’t return the FULL list of status attributes. By default it just returns the status’ user, text, created_at and ID.  The essentials but I needed the full lot. No worries

After installing the gem Open /vendor/gem/twitter4r-0.3.0/lib/twitter/model.rb

Scroll down and find the STATUS Class.

Within the class you can modify/edit/add your other attributes if necessary. Worked well for me. In my case I added :in_reply_to_user_id to the @@Attributes array and that was a wrap.

Now let’s keep building…

but i had to change that… so i opened up /vendor/gem/twitter/twitter.rb… scrolled down and found the STATUS method, and added in the other attributes. easy enough… now lets keep working.

He’s Alive!!! ALIVE!!!

He's Alive!!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gentleman, I apologize for the long long LONG lapse in communication. Alot of Work, School, & Rails. I’ve had my ass chewed the last 4 months but I’m still here!!!   Bright side is that I’ve been busy working on a variety of new things, one of which being a huge new contribution to my true love… The Magento Community.  Look out for more details on this very soon. I wanted to give something back and hopefully it’ll help alot of people out.

For all those who have emailed and posted, I will be replying to you personally and providing the best support I can.

I’m still Alive and Kicking Folks.  Look out for new additions here very soon.  Until then… feel free to drop me a line!

Google Friend Connect…Will it dominate the new data portability frontier?

Well… Google’s in.  It’s official. I’m sure you’ve heard the news that the internet giant joined Facebook (Facebook Connect) and Myspace (Data Availability) this week when it announced it’s plans to expand its OpenSocial platform via “Friend Connect” to take advantage, and ultimately regulate, the new “social”  web.  When I got the news it didn’t surprise me.  Google’s a friggin’ beast right?  But what did surprise me though was the fact that there’s still a big piece missing…

So what’s the deal?

It should  be noted that Google isn’t getting into the social networking space as a provider. They’re not creating a new Myspace, or Facebook, or Ning network. Nope…Google’s taking another angle. There’s all this buzz around Data Portability currently. Basically providing social functionality on OTHER sites. Myspace announced it’ll allow it, Facebook announced it’ll allow it. Hi5, Orkut, Plaxo,  the whole lot is going to allow their social graphs, profiles, and functionality to be used on other websites.  Cool right?
This is what we web publishers would get : (credit mashable for the images)

Now… in comes Google’s Friend Connect, and they decide rather than having web publishers need to learn all different types of code to port different social data to their sites…they’ll do it for us. They’re aiming to make Friend Connect the CENTER of all the portability by providing  an easy, no coding necessary solution for publishers to add social functionality to their sites. So the image above.. now looks something like this:

Now that’s friggin awesome.  An easy solution for web publishers to get a piece of the big social pie. Friends from facebook can chat right on your site, myspace groups can stay in touch outside of myspace.  Site owners can grow their audiences by taking advantage of the social connections (friends, family, etc) members have established on their social networks. This gives way to the ability to target your readership, enhance user experience, and analyze what your readers are do–Wait…can you really analyze what your readers are doing?

The missing piece with Google Friend connect…

And thats where the floor dropped out from underneath me. The main reason why I would use Friend Connect is to build a larger audience for my websites, and at the same time analyze what that audience is doing, saying, and sharing. Yet… Friend Connect misses that piece.  Sure visitors can chat, share, and link up with each other on my “Friend Connect Enabled” site, therefore increasing THEIR own experience. But it doesn’t seem like theres away for me to tap into the API and really analyze their social graphs. So far, Friend Connects more of a widget placed on your site via an Iframe similar to Mybloglog.  If I can’t really dig into the system, learn who my sites visitors are and their trends, then really is the whole idea worth it?  I’m better off setting up a Ning or KickApps network and building my own  social network if thats the case.

*Sigh* Maybe I’m ranting…its definitely still too early to tell the final result. Currently Google’s metering access to Friend Connect and there’s quite the wait list. The idea definitely looks promising though. Hopefully it doesn’t under-deliver.

I’m sure we’ll see soon. In the meantime take a look at FireFly, a new app that’s alot similar to the FriendConnect idea.  Might be promising too.

Why Magento kicks e-commerce ass (and why i love it)

I’ve been using Magento Commerce since it’s early early preview release back in August of 07′.  I’ve been a junkie ever since.  It took me about an hour playing with the framework to decide that THIS was the solution i’d been waiting for.  Not only is it open-source,  a godsend for developers,  but the ingenuity, the community, and the true MVC nature of the framework just rubbed me in all the right places.

Any developer knows that the E-commerce space has sucked for some time now. Yes… sucked. Been crap. Nothing to get excited over.  And for myself… the majority of my clients are small, up and coming businesses, entrepreneurs themselves who don’t have the budget for an over-priced ASP or custom solution. I like those people, I like their drive and ambition.. and I’m happy I can provide them with something to let them bang out with the big shots.

My most recent Magento project www.kanemarie.com, is a luxury jewelry retailer.  Previously hosted by a ASP-driven box, I took on the project to really push magento to its limits. I’ve been happy with the results. Lot more work to go though. Magento just makes you WANT to code.   Your not stuck within a limited system like say an OScommerce, or X-cart…. trust I’ve was a whore for them both in the past.

Why do I love Magento? From a design standpoint… you can literarally skin this baby anyway you wish. The Design is TRUELY seperate from the code. So CSS fanatics dig in. No need to mix PHP code within some smarty template with your xhtml. That in itself is a MAJOR improvement.

Another improvement is the code-base itself, the team behind magento has put alot of time into developing a smart, saavy system that can deliver results amongst a variety of e-commerce stores. Multiple language support, Multiple stores, Smart browsing via layered navigation, RSS product feeds, tagging and reviewing products, comparing products, product wishlists…. even Product Image Zoom is standard right out of the box. Impressive?  Trust me theres more once you pop the hood.

But I think I started this blog and made blogging about magento my first post because of the community behind this project. Like I said, I’ve been playing with Magento since last August during its early preview release and I’ve had the pleasure of not only talking to the team.. but several developers, store owners, and cool people alike within the forums and magento blog. There’s a surge of support that’s uncanny for a software project this early in its lifespan. I’m thrilled to say I’m apart of the community, and invite any other developers to join as well.  Ask and answer, show off your sites, and enjoy what definitely is E-commerce evolved.  I sure am.

Go Go Magento!!

Look forward to more posts on this blog about specific tips and tricks with developing e-commerce sites with magento.  Feel free to message me on the magento forum or send me a msg via Twitter as well.