So this was the first website I’ve ever created. Because of that it was fairly buggy and took a while for me to add simple things. I was playing with the CodeIgniter and figured doing quizcreate.com all over again would be an easy thing to do. Have a look around.
Don’t mind this text. Trying to get added somewhere ESW93HKYTDGU
With over 30 retweet bots on Twitter combining over one million retweets I’m probably the craziest one making these bots. While these bots are simple in nature there are a lot of things to consider while developing a retweet bot.
You look like less of a spammer if you have quality retweets
This is the most important rule to follow and one that most don’t. If you’re using some feed automated tweeting service like twitterfeed using an atom feed from search.twitter.com you loose all control over your retweets. Tweets with links must be ignored out to help your reputation and to avoid your bot being abused by spammers. Spammers will take advantage of your bots faster than you can clean up the mess.
You will also want to avoid retweeting people that purposely try to trigger your bot. You want spontaneity, not assholes looking to become popular through your bot. Log all of your retweets and limit each person a few per day.
Don’t retweet @replies or @mentions either. That just gets messy very quickly.
Allow “users” to opt-out
The purpose of a retweet bot is to be fun. If someone doesn’t see the fun in it I give them the option to opt out and go the extra mile of removing all retweets from that user. That’s all easily automated and makes people happy.
Log every retweet
Having a database of every retweet is very handy. Not only can you gather good statistics but you can try to hunt down spammers abusing your bots, or make fun lists with who you’ve retweeted the most. Keep a record of the username, user id, date/time, text, original tweet id and retweet id. Do this as early as you can and you won’t regret it.
Be original
No one wants to be hammered with retweets just because they said “balloon boy”. Do your homework and make sure there are no other bots looking for the same phrase you are. Don’t make a bot because of a fad like “pants on the ground” Oh and stay away from cursing bots. There are more than enough of those around right now.
Formatting your retweet
Right now you have two options. Either do an “old” retweet that follows the “RT @username: tweet tweet” format, or use Twitter’s new retweet function in the api. I used to do something like “(@username) tweet tweet” mainly because you save yourself a few characters. I switched to Twitter’s official retweet api method for a few weeks and regretted it ever since. Not every Twitter client has really integrated retweets in timelines. (btw: hurry up with Tweetie 2 for the mac, jeez!) Plus people check their mentions way more than retweets. Retweeting through the api means your tweet is 80% less visible and you want visibility.
Don’t follow people
Not much to be said about this. You can follow yourself to maybe gain yourself some followers, or to get feedback from people. But bulk following random or retweeted users is pointless. You follow people to read their timeline, not to pimp your account out.
I just finished reading a story of a blogger that tried getting their defectivepower brick for a MacBook Pro replaced under warranty. Here’s the article: http://www.tardyslip.net/index.php/2010/01/06/warranty-schmarranty
While I sympathize with this dilemma I feel this became an issue because mainly she did not want to make an appointment. If you want something replaced at any Apple Store you must see a genius. And to see a genius at the Apple Store it is your best bet to make an appointment. I don’t like that rule but it certainly helps the techs behind that genius bar from having to deal with rows of already frustrated people just standing there.
My girlfriend recently needed a power brick replaced under warranty for an older MacBook Pro and our experience was much, much different than the post I just read. Why? I played by their rules and wasn’t an asshole about it. We made an appointment for a few days later, showed up with the brick and her laptop (in case they needed the serial number), waited while the genuis filled out some electronic paperwork, and walked out the door with a new power brick. It’s that simple.
I’ll admit that I knew ahead of time an appointment was needed. I used to work at that same Apple Store over five years ago. But had we walked in with power brick in hand and were told to make an appointment we would have. Instead this person threw a fit and showed the internet how impatient she is. Make the appointment, be calm, and get your replacement adapter. If you don’t like the store, call Apple and they’ll ship you a replacement.
I deal with a lot of MySQL queries each day and am always unsure of how I should be formatting them and hate wasting time on making them look “pretty.” I mean, php and perl have easy to use code tidiers so why can’t MySQL?
Make sure that you install SQL::Beautify from cpan first (run sudo cpan SQL::Beautify to install)
Then drop the plugin in your Coda plugins folder and make your SQL prettier!
This is my first plugin for Coda so hopefully this is installable on other machines.
Download here (v.01)
Download here (v.02)
Edit: Version .02 uses a different perl module. That info was changed above.
I’ve disabled all forms of comments on my page and I encourage you to do the same. Comments are commonly a source of spam, trolls, and awkward moments. Plus with a “fanbase” as small as this blog has, there’s not much of a point to maintaining comments. I get a comment out of every five posts and most of the time it’s for a very old post.
I’m not the first to go with this. I was inspired by Alex Payne’s post here: http://al3x.net/2009/02/24/why-no-comments-more-everything-buckets.html
So, if you do have a retort, question, comment, or concern you can do one of three things:
I’ve noticed that a lot of people are linking the “social media” images that I have on my website. I didn’t create these images, and they’re available without having to give attribution, but linking to images on my site is a no no. For the larger offenders I have replaced images requested from your domains with something a little more “colorful.”
If you are interested in using the same icons that I’m using on your site, here they are. Enjoy!
http://icons.mysitemyway.com/matte-white-square-icons-social-media-logos/
And for those that found some images on your website were replaced with tubgirl… That’s exactly why you should never hotlink images from another domain.
I don’t get it. How is this desk priced at over $700? I kind of get that quality lumber can be expensive. With a fancy paint job that can bump up the price some more. It’s a small kitchen table with matchstick-like legs and some organizers on each end for crying out loud. I don’t consider myself a master of wood (stop your giggling!) but if someone were to make one from scratch and included the price of new tools you’d come way under $700. If this design looked halfway appealing and I wasn’t so lazy I would try making one.
It’s bad enough you’re raping my wallet with this price but you could at least give my eyeballs a reach around.
https://www.wintercheckfactory.com/shop/497-PAUL-DESK
Normally I wouldn’t care about things like this but the same company also makes a scarf that I would love to own. Unfortunately I can’t justify giving money to a place that, to me, overcharges for something like the above desk. And that’s coming from an Apple enthusiast.
… reply to your customer’s email right away. Even if you don’t have anything to tell them, you should reply. it shows you received their email and that you’re aware of the situation.
I ordered a pair of Dots Gloves. They were too small and there was a thread on the index finger that started to unravel. I only wore these twice and neither time was outdoors. I fired off an email with pictures of the problem asking for a replacement.
I didn’t receive an answer for two business days. At first I replied to the email address that sent me my order confirmation. It looked like a real person’s email address maybe they don’t answer their mail. So after a few days I figured I was wrong about that and used the contact email address from their site. I received a reply no longer than 20 minutes later from the first address that I emailed and never received a response from. That’s a big problem. I’m assuming that a bunch of people see email coming in from the contact address from your site. Once you saw I forwarded my original request to it you realized you had better reply quick or someone was going to be on your ass about it.
That’s really shady and not the first time I have seen someone do that in a company.
The reply I did get back stated there was a bad batch of gloves and my replacement would be shipped out on Monday (that was October 26th) Sweet, I appreciated that bit of info. Almost two weeks later and I have not heard anything nor have I seen any gloves show up at my doorstep. So I fired off another email to the personal account on Thursday the 5th asking for a tracking number. I was confident since we had an email exchange going now that I would receive an answer. Three days later and I have no reply. I forward my email to the contact address from the site again and wouldn’t you know I got a reply about 20 minutes later stating this would be looked in to. This was from a new personal address that had been cc’d in on my previous emails. I received a tracking number shortly after that. I got the tracking number twice. Once from the person who replied to me saying they’d look in to it, and another time from the guy that likes to ignore emails.
One thing was done right here: I got an email regardless of new information. Getting that “Sorry I don’t have any information for you now but I will get back to you” email really made me feel like something was getting done. And if I would have gotten an email like that any time I sent my FIRST emails that would have been even better. I do care if you can tell me something, but if you can’t it looks good if you just acknowledge that I sent you an email.
Now the kicker about all of this. The gloves were shipped a day after I send the first email asking for a tracking number. You know, 10 days after I was told the gloves would be shipped. I can’t say exactly what caused the delay but I assume it was sent the day after I started asking again because someone realized they messed up. Of course a nice little “got lost in the shuffle but they’ve been sent” email would have been nice, and would have avoided me writing this post explaining to people why I think your company (or at least one person in it) is really shady.
After this experience, I’m convinced this is a huge company that just doesn’t know what it’s doing.
I had a package that According to it’s tracking number, arrived to our local FedEx facility on Monday at 7:02am. It was not scheduled to be delivered until Wednesday. I can understand they couldn’t get it to me on Monday since it was late morning but you would figure I would have had it on Tuesday.
So I fire off an email to them asking if I can pick it up. I got a reply with the address of where to go and their hours of operation. Great! So I went to pick up my package a few hours after that.
Well when I got there the woman behind the desk said my package was not available until Wednesday and could pick it up then. I was honestly a little peeved. They have it, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t at least get it on Tuesday, and the email I for back said nothing remotely close to “you have to wait until Wednesday”
On my way back home I emailed the person back explaining what happened. And that they either they forgot to mention I had to wait until Wednesday or the center that I went to was wrong. I got this reply:
May we suggest for you to call our customer service department at 1.800.463.3339 before heading to the station to ensure that the package is ready for pickup or you may wish to continue monitoring your shipment to obtain updated status by using our online tracking page: http://www.fedex.com/us/Tracking
And that kind of made me angry because it doesn’t show me that person ever knew what was going on with my package and I already know how to track a package. That’s why I contacted them to begin with.
Once I made it home I received a call from FedEx (and it was a blocked number, that’s not cool) Whoever was on the other line sounded like they were in a warehouse. They asked if I wanted to pick up my package tomorrow. I said yes and he said he would hold it for me.
Now I thought that was pretty awesome. I wasted my time going there when my package wasn’t available because of them, so now I can get it a day early from their facility.
Checked the tracking number on Tuesday, “On FedEx vehicle for delivery” You have to be kidding me. This was the day I’m supposed to come over and pick up the package from your facility. Why is it on a truck? I thought maybe their tracking system had it wrong. Maybe it’s waiting at the facility. Well a few hours later and the tracking number was updated. The package was delivered and my dad signed for it.
I am happy that my package was delivered but absolutely no one that I spoke with at FedEx gave me any accurate information.
Just launched a new website: retweettweet.com.
You can now create your own bot on Twitter that retweets when certain words are said. This service costs $50 a month. I know that’s a lot but I think it’s worth that much. When you have a bot like this you’ll automatically pick up more followers. All of the bots I run gain followers based on how often I retweet. Plus you can use that account to tweet advertisements or anything you would like really. I wouldn’t recommend doing this with your personal account but you can if you wish.
If you want to learn more about this service go to http://retweettweet.com or get in touch with me.
Once you fill in the form on that site I’ll get ahold of you. Some searches people come up with have too many results and may need to be modified. Once that’s straightened out I’ll add you to my system, give you a link to PayPal, and another to authenticate your new bot with our system.
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