4 June 2009 tagged bots, twitter
I haven’t mentioned this in my blog yet but for the last few months I have been operating a few RT bots on twitter. For those of you not on Twitter or don’t know what an RT is I’ll explain. RT stands for retweet. If someone likes a tweet from someone or for some other wants to spread that tweet around they’ll make a post that, usually, is formed as follows
RT @orig_poster_name Text of their tweet
With my bots I am doing the same thing but have an automated way of finding tweets that contain a certain phrase and retweet that. Depending on the phrase this can end up retweeting a lot or just a little. My busiest bot is @shutupmeg who looks for the phrase “shut up” and a few variations of that.
The point? To have fun mainly. I don’t have a solid plan for monetizing this however my accounts have a large number of followers so advertising may work in the future. For now I’m keeping my greed itch at bay.
The profile page of my bots have a link back to a page listing all of my bots, their last few retweets, and a small survey. The results don’t really matter but I do like feedback on what I’m doing.
This is a comment I received recently:
I don’t find these bots entertaining. They’re very annoying and are an invasion of privacy, since they retweet stuff people say.
- Anonymous
I really wish they would have left their name so I could give them a link to this post, and the following lesson:
When you post something on the internet, especially on a public website like twitter, that work is no longer private
The internet as we know it is a place where information and ideas can be viewed over and over again, shared, remixed, repackaged, and spit back out on to the internet again where the cycle can continue. This does not happen with every bit of content out there but if something is deemed worthy of this by anyone then it can and will happen.
If something is private to you then maybe sharing that on the internet isn’t the greatest idea you’ve had. I recommend that you write it down on a sheet of paper, look at it, and burn said paper. If you must share something private on the internet don’t come running to mommy because your ex boyfriend, teacher, or some bum in an internet cafe saw it and *ghasp* spread it around.
So, Mr/Mrs Anonymous, do you really want to share something that’s private on Twitter? Make your account private. It’s an option and that way bots like mine can’t view your stuff unless you specifically allow them to. Otherwise, don’t call me a pervert when I look in to your livingroom window while you’re changing your clothes with the drapes fully open.
26 January 2009 tagged gobloggo, looreview, projects
I shut down two projects today. One was godgivesyoulemons.com and the other is looreview.natefanaro.com. I’m really sad to see looreview pass but I obviously never spent any time on it. I most certainly would if I had the domain name that I wanted. That will have to wait though.
God Gives You Lemons was more of an impulse buy. While it was fun it wasn’t popular. I have the software around for it since it was a custom setup. I doubt it’s useful to anyone else but I can’t throw away code.
I’m also starting to seriously debate the future of gobloggo.com. I can retool it as just a small community, a utility site that basically works just like ping.fm, or I can shut it down. Honestly I need to get some people to post naked pics on it. Seriously. Mobog made it BIG because of porn. On the web, most things take off because they’re driven by porn.
10 January 2009 tagged projects, tweetscribe, twitter
With all of the hubub of twitter, oauth, celeb accounts getting hacked, and phishing dm’s going out like mad, I wanted to make a statement about how TweetScribe handles your passwords.
We don’t.
There’s a little bit of grey text below the login box of TweetScribe that I really mean. “We do not store your password!” And I want to prove that to you.
All authentication is handled by Twitter. If Twitter doesn’t auth you, TweetScribe won’t auth you. The above code happens after Twitter says your username and password is valid. We then store your user name so when you log in next we can grab your searches on TweetScribe. No passwords are saved in this code or anywhere else.
We don’t need your password either. All searches we do when you are not logged in to TweetScribe are handled under our own username and password. (Not really needed with twitter’s search API but we log in anyway) The only time TweetScribe needs your password is when you want to follow someone, or post a tweet in reply to someone else.
So no more second guessing whether or not you should try us out. Log in and give TweetScribe a try!
5 November 2008 tagged projects, tweetscribe, twitter
Some new work has been done on TweetScribe
I managed to get my layout straightened out. The previous version was put up real quick so I could test the UI a little. Now things looks a little cleaner. I also made an icon for @tweetscribe
One feature that I want to add is the ability to see who is showing up the most in your results so you can follow them. Also in the works is the ability to reply to any tweet that shows in your search results. This would be a site only feature of course. I wouldn’t be able to make a feed out of that. So many ideas and so little time I guess 
2 November 2008 tagged projects, tweetscribe, twitter
Just launched a new website: tweetscribe.com
Here’s what it’s all about. When you use twitter and follow people you’re following just people. Sometimes you don’t always want to know what’s going on with your friends but just about things. Products, websites, what people are listening to, etc. You can currently use twitter’s advanced search and get a list of your results for one search term, but tweetscribe allows you to merge as many advanced searched that you’d like in to one easy feed.
There are a few good uses for something like this:
Companies can use it to follow who’s saying what about them and their products.
Search for “is down” and find out what’s not working so great right now.
Follow news about your favorite sports team and find fans from anywhere.
So give it a try. Hopefully this isn’t just another project I get rid of in a year
23 October 2008 tagged gobloggo, projects
I realized the most embarassing thing today, gobloggo.com really didn’t look right in IE. Same happened with godgivesyoulemons.com. Normally I attribute this to IE’s lack of knowing how to render a page like everyone else but this time it was my fault. Both sites have been fixed. I can’t imagine how many people using IE must have seen that and went *yuck* right away. Actually, I can tell you. gobloggo’s visits from IE are 50.46%. godgives you lemons is at 61.76% Ugh, that sucks. Sorry IE users! (ps: stop using ie)
22 October 2008 tagged twitter
Looking to gain some followers on twitter. Please join me! http://twitter.com/natefanaro
20 October 2008 tagged hosting, projects, proxy
I know I’m a little late with when school’s starting but right now is the start of proxy season for me. I started this last year and while I have made some cash it was certainly more of a learning experience for me. Last year I had a few issues with the vps host that I had, then had to switch hosts a few times. I think I finally found one that I’ll be keeping for a long time. They’re setup is very fast and my uptime has been great so far (knock on wood). I have had that server up for about three months preparing for a good increase in traffic. Hopefully all I’ll have to do is sit back and watch some cash roll in
One thing I did to start this off was advertise with proxy.org. If you own a proxy this is the best way to do it. Previously I would get the $20 Bold Listing a month for one or two of my proxies. This time I went with the $125 ‘Tier Two Listing’ package. This gets my proxy url “above the fold” on their site and ultimately beings in way more impressions. Hopefully in the next 30 days I’ll cover that cost in ads. If so, this is going to work put pretty well this year.
9 October 2008 tagged projects
I think I own somewhere around 14 domain names and that’s way too many. So dirtycelebs.info and thesafewordis.com are going to be the first to go. dirtycelebs.info was going to be a money making scheme where I grabbed rss feeds, reposted them to a drupal site, then get traffic and via some goos seo and money from google adwords of course. And while I did get that technically working fine no one really went to it and I wasn’t enthused about what I was doing.
thesafewordis.com was supposed to be a site for some guys and myself at work to make t-shirts. It’s been a year with no t-shirts and I’m the one that paid for the domain to begin with so I’m giving up on that.
I’ve also been thinking about rebranding from thenaterix.com to something else. I want to use my name. It just feels more professional I guess. It will come with a good site upgrade as well that should hopefully better reflect my online ventures and activities. Stay tuned of course (you know, the three or so stalkers I have that read this blog)
3 October 2008 tagged gobloggo, iPhone
Whew. After a little prodding from Erica I finally sat down for an hour and got video posts working on gobloggo.com. If your phone supports 3gp then everything will work great. I have to make some tweaks still for mp4 but I’m not sure how popular that’s becoming as of late. Too bad the iPhone still doesn’t do video or else I’d have that up by now. Hopefully Apple will get with it soon!