[Bubba]

I'm quite pleased with this. Using the rather nice Twittbot i've set up a ukbouldering Twitter group.

What's the point of this?
- You get out to Raven Tor and everything is seeping and nasty. You write a quick text to the group Twitter; minutes later anyone checking the group page will have this information saving themselves a wasted journey.

- Driving through Hathersage, you see a police speedtrap - again, a quick txt and it warns everyone else.

- You're at the crag and Johnny HotRock has just flashed project Z. You can now be the first to tell the world.

I'm sure other uses will be found...

Where is the group Twitter page?
http://twitter.com/ukbouldering

How do I get set up?
- Create a Twitter account if you don't already have one.
- Go to Settings/Devices and enter your mobile number.
- Twitter will give you it's phone number and a code you need to authenticate your number with.
- Set up the Twitter number in your address book
- Send a txt to that number containing the code you were given.

If you want all updates that are sent to the group to appear in your Twitter feed, then simply follow ukbouldering.

How do I send information to the ukbouldering Twitter?
- If you are online, then you just go to your Twitter and type "@ukbouldering" followed by the text you want to send.
- Using your phone, write a text to the Twitter number and start the message with "@ukbouldering", followed by the text you want to send. If you don't start the text with "@ukbouldering" then the text will update your own Twitter, not the group one.

Always bear in mind Twitter has a limit of 140 characters so keep things sweet.

Updates will take a few minutes to appear so be too impatient if it doesn't show up immediately.

Warnings
Please only use this service for news/conditions/etc and not as a chatroom. Anything outside of these topics will just get deleted.

Currently access is open to anyone but Twittbot brings with it a whole load of moderation features. If people misuse or spam the service they will be dealt with in a similar way to on the forums. Long term the access may be set to invite only.

The Future
I'm sure it will be possible to syndicate the Twitter feed directly into the forum bypassing the need for anyone to go out to Twitter.com if they don't want to. The benefits of this are obvious.

[slackline]

 

Good work on setting that all up Bubba.

- You're at the crag and Johnny HotRock has just flashed project Z. You can now be the first to tell the world.

I'm sure other uses will be found...

Twitpic so that all ascents can be validated?

Haven't used Twitter much myself, only signed up on the back of Falling Down's suggestion to do this, but my usual nickname is taken and you're not allowed -'s anyway, so anyone who's interested (and why would you be?) can find me on twitter as enilkcals (think mirrors ).

[GCW]

So I assume this will just ve a massive list of conditions reports?  They won't get filed per venue or anything?  
Are you going to delete old reports when an up to date one comes along, Bubbs?

[Bubba]

Aye, it'll just be a big list - things will soon disappear from the page anyway.

If it becomes too unwieldy there's no reason not to set up separate accounts for different reports, but that might just become a pain in the arse.

[slackline]

There are also various clients for your mobile phones.  One I've downloaded and installed on the 'ol N95 is Twibble that will also take advantage of the GPS on your phone.

Plenty of others out there, some listed at the TwitPic site are here.

[Falling Down]

Nice one Bubba.. I meant to do this at the weekend but you beat me to it and saved lots of time.  I did create a test Raven Tor Conditions Report twitter but got lost with the @ function.

[Jaspersharpe]

Nice idea FD and nice execution Bubba. This could be really useful.

Just sent a test message from my phone and was amazed to see it worked (amazed that I'd followed the instructions correctly that is).

[Bubba]

I'm trying to find a way of feeding into the forums somehow.

I've found some PHP libraries that allow me to pull the feed from Twitter but now need to work out how to re-format this and get it to post into smf.

It doesn't help that i've never really done any PHP coding before.

[slackline]

Others seem to be after the same thing.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to take the RSS feed of the ukbouldering group and then use something like the RSS feed poster in the forums to aggregate the rss feed into forums posts?

EDIT : Bummer the modified files in the RSS feed poster are no longer hosted, will have a hunt round for something similar.

[slackline]

Found an alternative posting with links to valid files.

Thread is here, and you need to grab the files....

Modified-FeedPoster.zip
fopen-replacement-uopen.zip

...from here.

[Bubba]

Others seem to be after the same thing

That's me

Good shout on the feed poster mod - that might well work. Never thought to look for that.

There are two mods that do this - one has been discontinued and the other only works on SMF 2.0 RC1. With SMF2.0 so close I might just wait until I upgrade and use the new mod - no point installing a mod that is about to die.

[Bubba]

Slacks you are a hero - it works!

Installed the mod on the test board and it pulls the feed in just fine. SMF 2.0 allows for scheduled tasks so you just set it up to pull down the feed every 1/2 hour or whatever.

http://ukbouldering.net/forum/index.php?topic=3.0

[GCW]

Are you going to feed that onto here, Bubbs?  Or will it just stay on the UKB.net site?

Cool idea though.

[slackline]

Slacks you are a hero - it works!

Installed the mod on the test board and it pulls the feed in just fine. SMF 2.0 allows for scheduled tasks so you just set it up to pull down the feed every 1/2 hour or whatever.

http://ukbouldering.net/forum/index.php?topic=3.0

  All good 

Are you going to feed that onto here, Bubbs?  Or will it just stay on the UKB.net site?

Cool idea though.

Not wanting to put words into Bubba's mouth, but I have a strong suspicion it will end up in ukbouldering.com (see above highlighting  )

[Bubba]

Yeah, the release of SMF 2.0 is imminent so when it's released and the mods that ukb needs are updated, this will get installed along with a general upgrade of the forums.

[Falling Down]

There's a raventor twitter I set up last month to try this out but I couldn't get the @ function figured out properly.  What are your peeps thoughts on having one for each of the main lime crags? 

[r-man]

Best with just one twitter. Keep it simple, or people won't use it.

Btw, I did sign up, but can't seem to activate my account. Reading the problems page, it seems twitter may not work with prepaid phones. Annoying.

[slackline]

I'd be inclined to agree with one twitter group.

@FD : I registered my phone by sending a text with a given code from the site to a number they listed.

[Falling Down]

I'll delete the Tor twitter then to avoid confusion.

[dave]

quick Q: when i sign up my mobile to twatter, will i get shit sent to my phone that'll cost me money or owt, or do i just pay for whatever texts i sent to twatter as per? word.

[slackline]

quick Q: when i sign up my mobile to twatter, will i get shit sent to my phone that'll cost me money or owt, or do i just pay for whatever texts i sent to twatter as per? word.

I signed up and was displayed a message indicating that they couldn't send SMS texts to my network so I'm hopefully fairly safe (I'm on the 3 network).

Depending on your phone you may be able to find a native app such as Twibble for your phone if you still have concerns about this.

[dave]

word

[Bubba]

quick Q: when i sign up my mobile to twatter, will i get shit sent to my phone that'll cost me money or owt, or do i just pay for whatever texts i sent to twatter as per? word.

Aye, to confirm - Twitter won't send you anything. You just pay for the txts you send.

Twitter used to send you stuff updates, but since it's not free any more they've chopped it.

[dave]

thought I'd better highlight this on here incase people haven't twigged:

As it transpires, the twitter number that you text to (+44 7624 801423) is an Isle Of Man number, which despite being a +44 "UK" number is classed as being international by a lot of mobile providers, like apparently T-mobile, orange, o2 etc etc. Consequently it could be costing you upwards of 20 or 25p a throw to text to it, in which case it won't come out of your inclusive text bundles. So its probably worth checking before you go apeshit on a twitter texting regime.

[Bubba]

Fuck - good call Dave

[slackline]

Well spotted, hadn't noticed that.

Good case for using Twibble if you've "unlimited" net usage on your contract.

[Bubba]

thought I'd better highlight this on here incase people haven't twigged:

As it transpires, the twitter number that you text to (+44 7624 801423) is an Isle Of Man number, which despite being a +44 "UK" number is classed as being international by a lot of mobile providers, like apparently T-mobile, orange, o2 etc etc. Consequently it could be costing you upwards of 20 or 25p a throw to text to it, in which case it won't come out of your inclusive text bundles. So its probably worth checking before you go apeshit on a twitter texting regime.

This has just changed for Vodafone users and other networks should follow suit

[Falling Down]

Is there something up with the UKB twitter? I posted @ukbouldering a couple of times over the weekend with conditions reports but the updates don't seem to have been updated...

[slackline]

Is there something up with the UKB twitter? I posted @ukbouldering a couple of times over the weekend with conditions reports but the updates don't seem to have been updated...

I noticed that one I'd sent a week ago Sunday was reposted mid-week last week, no updates appear to have made it through since the 8th April.

[Bubba]

I received a tweet from FD on the 12th (it's still in my tweetdeck) saying "Beautiful down Cheedale today. Did Hungry Eyes yyfy", but then this hasn't appeared on the twitter page when I look now..

Checking on Twittbot (the thing that posts to the ukb twitter) there is a news item dated 8th April saying "unannounced Twitter api change breaks Twittbot" - I would guess that's what's caused the problem. It's fixed now apparantly so all should work again....

edit
Looks like twittbot still having problems coz recent updates not reaching the account...

[Falling Down]

I received a tweet from FD on the 12th (it's still in my tweetdeck) saying "Beautiful down Cheedale today. Did Hungry Eyes yyfy", but then this hasn't appeared on the twitter page when I look now..

You will have seen that because you're 'following' me and see my all twitts.  I sent a test earlier ( I think you did too) but it hasn't appeared in ukbouldering..

[Bubba]

Ah yes, of course 

The problem is Twittbot - see the message here

[benpritch]

any one want half hourly updates for the orme you can follow llandudnoPWS on twitter. wind speed and direction,humidity, temp and precipitation. also the website has a web cam pointing straight at it.

[slackline]

any one want half hourly updates for the orme you can follow llandudnoPWS on twitter. wind speed and direction,humidity, temp and precipitation. also the website has a web cam pointing straight at it.

Good knowledge there Ben 

[Bubba]

Twittbot is still down i'm afraid - hope they fix it soon.

[Bubba]

This is still down - if it's not fixed within a week I'll set something else up to do the job.

[Bubba]

I'm guessing at some stage the service we were using for this (Twittbot) will be repaired, but at the moment it's all dead and the developer won't reply to any information requests.

So, In the meantime this may work as a stop-gap.

http://www.tweetizen.com/users/throatslitter/ukbouldering

Tweetizen is much less flexible or powerful than Twittbot but it works differently.

All you need to do is mark any tweet with either:

ukbouldering.com or #ukbouldering

and after a short delay the Tweetizen page picks it up and displays it. There is also a way of embedding the feed into the forum like this:

[Falling Down]

So the reason why our conditions reports feed stopped working is because Twitter stopped showing @replies to anyone who followed a Twitter profile just after Bubbs setup the UKB profile.  So previously if you had been following UKB you would have seen all @ukb replies in your feed but that has now stopped. Has anyone seen a workaround or otherwise 'cos it was really bloody useful when it was working.

[Bubba]

I'm keeping my eyes open for an alternative but it still looks like Twittbot is borked and i've not seen any alternatives that work in any way as well.

It's quite frustrating really as the developers won't even say whether the project is dead/on hold/whatever.

[slackline]

So the reason why our conditions reports feed stopped working is because Twitter stopped showing @replies to anyone who followed a Twitter profile just after Bubbs setup the UKB profile.  So previously if you had been following UKB you would have seen all @ukb replies in your feed but that has now stopped. Has anyone seen a workaround or otherwise 'cos it was really bloody useful when it was working.

Seems to work ok for me still, just got your message about things not working come through ok via twitterfeed...



I've used Twitterfeed.com to set up and collate various Sheffield flickr group activity into one place and it works fine.

[slackline]

Just checked the older tweets against the threads here and the last post in this sub-forum was on the 25th and it appears to have made it through fine too...

[Falling Down]

Slackers,

you saw it because it was a post made on UKB rather than a Tweet. Bubbs has setup a Twitterfeed from the Conditions threads.

If I was to Tweet @ukbouldering you wouldn't
see it in your Twitterfeed.

[slackline]

Yeah, Bubba explained that, also a PIA 'cause it doesn't work if you SMS conditions, but its strange that '@ukbouldering' doesn't work though. 

[slackline]

tomtom has come up with a work around to this, and that is to tag all condition reports posted to twitter with '#ukb'

To then see posts pertaining to conditions report you then simply search for the 'ukb' tag on twitter.  Providing no one else is using it for anything you should only get a timeline of UKB conditions reports 

Good work to tomtom for sussing this one out 

[Bubba]

Have you noticed that the Tweetizen post box (about 8 posts up) has picked up the posts tagged with ukbouldering automatically? I'll change it to pull in #ukb too

[slackline]

Nice, I think we should find every single possible way of linking in tweets and RSS feeds for UKB conditions reports and stitch it all up nicely!!

[tomtom]

Have you noticed that the Tweetizen post box (about 8 posts up) has picked up the posts tagged with ukbouldering automatically? I'll change it to pull in #ukb too

Just had a good look at Tweetizen for my page.. problem is that it only seems to take recent updates (e.g. last day or two) instead of having a history of updates...

[Bubba]

Obviously this is no longer working due to the demise of Twittbot but I'd like to get it going again.

Can anyone see a problem with this:

- In addition to the ukbouldering twitter account, I create another one, say ukbconditions or something like that.
- The ukbouldering account is set to auto-follow anyone who follows it
- People post conditions reports to ukbouldering containing certain text (eg #ukbc)
- Using Twitterfeed, posts containing #ukbc are stripped from the ukbouldering twitter rss feed and sent to the ukbconditions twitter account.
- That way, the ukbconditions feed *only* displays conditions reports, whilst the main ukbouldering feed would contain everything from followers, etc etc.
- ukbcondtions wouldn't follow anybody, but everyone interested in conditions reports would follow it.

Does that make sense? A reasonable solution?

[slackline]

The only downside I see is people remembering to include #ukbc in posts, but since those from here who "tweet" regularly already seem to be in the habit of doing this it shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Bubba]

This is trickier than I first thought - twitterfeed won't allow you to use a twitter timeline rss feed

I'll probably have to set something up on the server.

<edit>
I think I can do this via a blog:
- set up dummy wordress blog on my server
- use the feedwordpress plugin to create blog content from the ukbouldering twitter rss feed
- now use twitterfeed to syndicate the rss view of the blog

going to try it out...

[Bubba]

Well it works, but the timings are a bit out - only seems to be updating about once an hour. Will work on getting it synced with twitterfeed so it updates every 1/2 hour.

I'll do a new sticky post when it's all working efficiently, but in the meantime the new conditions Twitter will be http://twitter.com/isitgreasy  (I quite like this name )

In order to submit a conditions report you need to tweet @ukbouldering (*not* @isitgreasy) with the characters "#ukbcon" in your tweet.

This tweet will then be fed over to @isitgreasy

So, you have to follow @ukbouldering (which will follow you back) in order to submit a report, but you would read @isitgreasy to view the conditions feed.

@isitgreasy will never follow anyone back, as that would defeat the object of the whole thing.

[Bubba]

Two problems.

i) It takes about an hour for the updates to get through - not ideal and I'll need to do some coding to change this I think.

ii) Twitter also throws "mentions" into the "replies" feed. This means tweets will get endlessly re-submitted. Not sure how to solve this one - if anyone has any ideas then please let me know!

[Bubba]

I think problem ii) can be solved by using Cron to run a MySql task which deletes posts from the intermediary wordpress blog every hour. Timing would have to be just right though in order not to lose posts.