[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