Photo courtesy of David Castro

The Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge, Plus Two Ebooks

OK, if you’re a programmer/coder/techie type, I’ve got a challenge for you.

After using Twitter for more than a week (follow me here), I’ve really grown to like the Twitterific app for the Mac. It has a really nice little interface, and scanning through new updates is easy.

I decided that I’d like to get notifications of new emails and RSS posts right inside of Twitter, so that I can get all my updates in one easy-to-read stream, without having to check in three different places (at Twitterific for tweets, Gmail for email, and Google Reader for RSS feeds). However, I haven’t found a service or hack that will do that.

There’s Twittermail for sending tweets via email, but if I forwarded my new emails from Gmail to Twittermail, they’d be broadcast to everyone who is following me. There’s Twitterfeed for sending new RSS feeds to my Twitter account, but again, these RSS feeds are broadcast to everyone who is following me.

I want the emails and RSS feeds to go to my Twitter account so that only I can see them, which isn’t the case with the two aforementioned services. There’s only one way to do that: through Direct Messaging in Twitter, from one Twitter account to another.

So here’s the hack I’ve figured out: set up a custom Twitterbot that will automatically Direct Message (DM) my Twitter account. Then I’ll forward new emails to the Twitterbot and set up RSS feeds to go to the Twitterbot, and they’ll be DM’d to my account — so only I can see them! Then I can read all my updates in Twitterific.

Sounds a little complicated, I know, but it’s not that hard, really. Here’s one of many articles on creating a Twitterbot. I just don’t know how to write code.

Thus, the Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge was born.

The Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge

Here’s the challenge: write a simple Twitterbot for me, and allow me to host it and test it out. If it works as planned, and you’re the first to submit, you win $50. However, I insist that you allow the code to be open-source, which means we’ll make it available to the public and anyone can use it.

In addition to the $50, I’ll feature your Twitterbot here on Zen Habits for a little recognition.

Here are the requirements of the Twitterbot:

Set up a Twitter account for the bot.
Write code that will use the Twitter API to do the following tasks.
Receive tweets from Twittermail and Twitterfeed, and then DM them to another pre-set user account (in this case, zen_habits).
Receive DMs from my Twitter account and then send an email with the text of the DM to my email account.
The bot should automatically befriend my Twitter account when I follow it on Twitter.
You will need to host this Twitterbot on a web server so we can test it out.
You’ll also need a simple web interface so that we can configure the Twitterbot — tell it which Twitter account to DM, and which email address to send emails to.
Ideally, this bot could be expanded, so that it can handle multiple users. Thus, I could sign up for an account with the bot, through the web page mentioned above, then add my Twitter account and email address and other info. And others can do the same, so that the bot would forward emails and feeds to the right Twitter account and email the right address when you DM it. However, this part isn’t a requirement for the challenge. It’s a bonus - because I think it would be more useful this way.
Again, you have to agree to make the code open-source, and release it to the public here on Zen Habits.
If there are multiple submissions around the same time, I will go with the first one that emails me (see procedure below), who also meets these requirements to my satisfaction. If the bot doesn’t work well and someone else submit a better one right after you, the second person will win.

So what do you think? Is it too confusing? Is it worth the effort? Let me know in the comments! If you have the bot ready for testing, just please send an email to zenhabits [at] gmail [dot] com, with the word “twitterbot” in the subject line. Please ensure that “twitterbot” (one word, not two) is in the subject line or I won’t see the email right away (I have a filter set up).

Two Excellent Ebooks You Might Like

If you’re not interested in ebooks, skip this part … but I thought I’d share a couple ebooks from other bloggers that I’ve read recently and found valuable:

Wisebread’s Wise Driving Guide: 108 Tips to Raise Your Fuel Economy: This is from the guys at Wisebread, one of my most favoritest personal finance blogs. And they did a great job, with a well-researched book full of tips that, when used together, will definitely save you some cash on gas. What I love is that they give you the facts on a lot of tips that actually don’t work or that are too dangerous for a non-professional driver to try. Invaluable resource. This was produced in conjunction with Web Warrior Tools (I’m a co-owner of WWT), so you can get it for free (for a limited time) if you subscribe to Wisebread’s RSS feed, or you can buy it for $9.95 from Web Warrior Tools.
Core Personal Values: A Practical Guide to Discover YOUR Personal Core Values: This ebook by blogger Lodewijk van den Broek is filled not only with great information, but useful exercises that will help you to turn the information into action. I really like the job Lodewijk’s done here … these are concepts that are useful in living a simple, successful and happy life. The book costs $14.95, and you can buy it here (this is an affiliate link).

Favorite Writing Blogs

Oh, also: you can nominate your favorite writing blog in a third annual contest. I won’t tell you which blog to nominate … you should nominate whichever you like best (hint: Write To Done is a writing blog).

The Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge, Plus Two Ebooks

OK, if you’re a programmer/coder/techie type, I’ve got a challenge for you.

Sounds a little complicated, I know, but it’s not that hard, really. Here’s one of many articles on creating a Twitterbot. I just don’t know how to write code.

Thus, the Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge was born.

The Zen Habits Twitterbot Challenge

In addition to the $50, I’ll feature your Twitterbot here on Zen Habits for a little recognition.

Here are the requirements of the Twitterbot:

Set up a Twitter account for the bot.
Write code that will use the Twitter API to do the following tasks.
Receive tweets from Twittermail and Twitterfeed, and then DM them to another pre-set user account (in this case, zen_habits).
Receive DMs from my Twitter account and then send an email with the text of the DM to my email account.
The bot should automatically befriend my Twitter account when I follow it on Twitter.
You will need to host this Twitterbot on a web server so we can test it out.
You’ll also need a simple web interface so that we can configure the Twitterbot — tell it which Twitter account to DM, and which email address to send emails to.
Ideally, this bot could be expanded, so that it can handle multiple users. Thus, I could sign up for an account with the bot, through the web page mentioned above, then add my Twitter account and email address and other info. And others can do the same, so that the bot would forward emails and feeds to the right Twitter account and email the right address when you DM it. However, this part isn’t a requirement for the challenge. It’s a bonus - because I think it would be more useful this way.
Again, you have to agree to make the code open-source, and release it to the public here on Zen Habits.
If there are multiple submissions around the same time, I will go with the first one that emails me (see procedure below), who also meets these requirements to my satisfaction. If the bot doesn’t work well and someone else submit a better one right after you, the second person will win.

Two Excellent Ebooks You Might Like

If you’re not interested in ebooks, skip this part … but I thought I’d share a couple ebooks from other bloggers that I’ve read recently and found valuable:

Wisebread’s Wise Driving Guide: 108 Tips to Raise Your Fuel Economy: This is from the guys at Wisebread, one of my most favoritest personal finance blogs. And they did a great job, with a well-researched book full of tips that, when used together, will definitely save you some cash on gas. What I love is that they give you the facts on a lot of tips that actually don’t work or that are too dangerous for a non-professional driver to try. Invaluable resource. This was produced in conjunction with Web Warrior Tools (I’m a co-owner of WWT), so you can get it for free (for a limited time) if you subscribe to Wisebread’s RSS feed, or you can buy it for $9.95 from Web Warrior Tools.
Core Personal Values: A Practical Guide to Discover YOUR Personal Core Values: This ebook by blogger Lodewijk van den Broek is filled not only with great information, but useful exercises that will help you to turn the information into action. I really like the job Lodewijk’s done here … these are concepts that are useful in living a simple, successful and happy life. The book costs $14.95, and you can buy it here (this is an affiliate link).

Favorite Writing Blogs

Posted on 28 August 2008 in Aboutzenhabits, Books, Technology |
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Comments (35)

Shamelle - TheEnhanceLife Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:22 pm

I am going to take up the Twitterbot challenge. I hail from the software world so it shouldn’t be too difficult :-0)

Shamelle

jak of stratius group Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:32 pm

An easy (kind of easy) work around for feeding email and rss into your twitter feed without others seeing them is to feed them into separately created twitter accounts that you create and follow (zen-email1 and zen-g-rss1 for instance) and then just lock the following and only allow yourself to see it.

this is a nice and easy hack, but it would definitely be nice to have scripts that make this even easier. that’s not my bag though.

pavs Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:35 pm

Leo, I suggest a bot making challenge that will do everything for me, including brushing my teeth in the morning after waking me and feeding me breakfast.

My GF is getting lazy in this department…

Of course, it will be open source, so that everyone can try it and tweak it as they please.

;)

jak of stratius group Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:35 pm

also, take a look at digsby. its a nice program (pc only for now, mac and linux soon) that brings all your twitter, social networking, emails, chat clients, etc. into one interface. its so nice on my pc, wish i had it on my mac.

Steve Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:36 pm

I know that my programming skill isn’t good enough for this task, but I will try it anyway. The worst thing that could happen is that I fail. But even then I would have learned a lot from it. And in my opinion much more than simply reading this big book with only a few examples in it. Learning by doing is simply the best way.

Leo Says:

August 28th, 2008, 22:41 pm

@jak: but even if your separate Twitter accts are following each other, will they automatically DM each other when a new email or RSS feed comes in? I haven’t seen a way to do that.

Also, I looked at digsby but it’s not what I’m looking for. I’ve seen other programs that integrate Twitter and email and RSS and all that, but I don’t like their interfaces, and you have to click on different tabs to do the different functions.

What I want is one stream of all new updates, and I’d like it in the Twitterific interface. :)

@pavs: Yes! Let me know if you figure that bot out. I’d use it. :)

jak of stratius group Says:

August 28th, 2008, 23:01 pm

@leo the twitter accounts you will set up, with twitter feed for instance (can be set to update on the half hour), would only be followed by you, so it would be in your normal twitter feed whenever the rss sends anything. and it would only be viewable by you. ive done it for a couple things. it is by no means a perfect solution, definitely a “hack”. maybe it can hold you over til you get a nice snazzy script to pull it all together cleanly.

i can understand not wanting digsby for that reason. i think it misses on google reader.

Leo Says:

August 28th, 2008, 23:07 pm

@jak: Oh, I see … hmm, yeah, it would be a workaround. It’s definitely not ideal, especially as I’d like to send emails via Twitter through the bot … but it’s a pretty good idea!

jak of stratius group Says:

August 28th, 2008, 23:17 pm

i consider myself an idea man, definitely not a programmer, ha. so that my shot at the problem.

btw, so glad you guys got a twitter account and are feeding your posts well. thats how i prefer to keep track of my main reeds. good move.

@jakrose

Ian Says:

August 28th, 2008, 23:20 pm

I use three Twitter accounts for myself personally. One is my main account, another for certain feeds that I don’ t want in my RSS reader (such as Friendfeed), and a third for feeds which I want to be sure of getting the updates for (such as Facebook friends updates) and that one I get texted updates for that third account, that is until Twitter decided against free SMS texts.

Kevin Says:

August 28th, 2008, 23:43 pm

Leo that is a crazy but absolutely wonderful idea/competition you have. Sadly I’m not much of a programmer myself but I definitely see the need. I’ve recently started twittering myself and twitterifics interface is just awesome.

Thanks for open-sourcing this too, I hope to use this new combined feature =D

James Says:

August 29th, 2008, 0:17 am

Leo:
Sounds like a nice idea, however how are you going to overcome the character limitation with twitter? You can send a long tweet to your account, and it will end up breaking it up into multiple tweets. I can see this being more an issue with your email solution that you are looking forward. If someone makes it happen, I’m glad you are willing to share :-)
James

FrugalNYC Says:

August 29th, 2008, 0:22 am

Doesn’t twitter seem interruptive like instant messaging? Kind of an anti-ZenHabit? :)

Ron Says:

August 29th, 2008, 1:36 am

I just discovered this FREE program that combines twitter and blogs and PAYS YOU to use it and the first person I thought of was you. I hope this is something you can use.
Naturally anyone else interested by all means check it out :)

Leo Says:

August 29th, 2008, 2:52 am

@FrugalNYC: Yes, yes it is anti-Zen Habits. :) However, I’m working on ways to integrate it into my workday without distracting too much — basically, you can dip into the stream whenever you like, without having to open it all the time.

@James: I actually like the character limitations of Twitter. I don’t need to read the full email — as long as I can see the subject and sender, that’s good enough. Ideally it would have a link back to the full email in Gmail if I wanted to read the full thing.

The cool thing is if I’m able to send emails from Twitter, I’ll be limited to 140 characters — now that’s a great limit for an email! You really have to choose your words carefully.

Charles Says:

August 29th, 2008, 3:04 am

If I had read your post 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have understood anything !!! :)

Glen Allsopp Says:

August 29th, 2008, 3:21 am

I love that photo of you and the Mac, looks very cool. I look forward to getting my own one day.

Hope you get the bot sorted!

Cheers,
Glen

Merijn Says:

August 29th, 2008, 3:59 am

Sorry to say, but I don’t get twitter. Why whould I spend tweeting (my last name is dutch for bird, I know my tweets ;) ), but still, I don’t get it.

I must admit that I do use IRC, old-school group-chat with a few intimate friends. Twitter is in a way comparable to that but the interface is a lot more difficult. (in my humble opinion, that is).

So my question is: What do you tweet? And why am I supposed to know you’re having a cup of coffee, typing your texts or just hanging out @someoneElse?

Leo Says:

August 29th, 2008, 6:14 am

@Merijn: It’s a good question that I asked myself before I started. The answer is you can’t really know until you try. You wouldn’t have known how interesting IRC would have been until you tried it either, right?

I’m still experimenting myself, but so far I’ve found a few pretty cool uses:

1. Pretty interesting updates on what other bloggers are doing — not “having coffee” stuff but new developments in their businesses. You could do the same with people in your field.
2. Lots of interesting links.
3. It’s a very large conversation — like what just happened when Obama was giving his speech. Everyone was talking about it, and it was a fascinating discussion.
4. You can update people who are interested in you with what your latest developments are — business and otherwise.
5. Questions — you can ask anything and gets some really great answers.
6. Bots — you can do some cool things, like set a timer, create a new calendar event, set up a to-do item, and more, within Twitter.

These are just a few things. Now, I’m not trying to sell you on Twitter — it’s not for everyone, and I’m not entirely sure it’s for me — but you asked. :)

growinold Says:

August 29th, 2008, 7:15 am

It may not be what ou are looking for but try netvibes.
http://www.netvibes.com

Leo Says:

August 29th, 2008, 8:32 am

@growinold: no, not looking for netvibes … I’ve tried it before. I want to be able to do this through the Twitterific interface — but with RSS and email. Twitterific, for those who don’t know it, is an app for the Mac (also for the iPhone) that has a really nice interface.

Dot H. Says:

August 29th, 2008, 9:27 am

That is one HUGE monitor screen!

Henry Says:

August 29th, 2008, 11:16 am

Sounds like an good thing to try. I haven’t bothered experiencing Twitter or Twitterific yet but like the general idea of using automation to perform certain rote tasks and consolidations (aggregations?) of data/content.

I have such a struggle managing all of the various communications, interruptions, assignments, priorities of my life (btw, that’s why I dip into your blog occasionally - for practical tips and encouragement - thank you!).

So I’m wary of more technology learning curves eating into my productivity and ability to concentrate. But I’m glad folks like you like to break the big rocks into small ones. Then I can more quickly decide if this is just another way to overload my life and mind or if it helps reduce clutter and interruptions.

Marc Says:

August 29th, 2008, 15:08 pm

I’m now used to permanently having the Twhirl application (an Adobe Air platform app streaming my Twitter-feed, just like Twitterific) which is open next to my browser on a widescreen display. Picture of my desktop here.

For me this is somewhat ideal as I can always keep an eye on Twitter while working in the browser (viewing, reading, writing, mailing et cetera). Moreover, links from my Twitter feed in Twhirl will automatically open up as a new tab in the browser.

So, I think I don’t have quite a need for any Twitterbot as of yet.

maurice Says:

August 29th, 2008, 16:49 pm

I coded a basic service to use twitter to notify me about several things going on on my servers. It may be a good basis for your desired bot. If anybody is interessted, just send me a private msg: twitter.com/mauricehh .

Jeanne Says:

August 29th, 2008, 16:51 pm

Not exactly what you’re looking for, but I set iGoogle as my home page and I have my gmail, google reader and betwittered gadgets at the top so I can see any updates.

matthijs de Jonge Says:

August 29th, 2008, 16:54 pm

With due respect, Leo, you’re going about this the wrong way. If I read your request correctly, what you really want is to have one single interface for reading all your emails, RSS messages and twitter messages.

Now we know that the twitter service suffers rather frequent outages (though it’s been getting a lot better) so it really does not make much sense to send emails and RSS (both rather stable) to twitter (rather fragile).

What makes more sense is to get your twitter messages into your email program, together with your RSS feeds as email is by far the most stable service you have.

Since you’re on a Mac, you can already get your RSS feeds into Mail.app. So what’s left is to get your twitter messages in there as well.

How to do it: have a script somewhere on a server that reads your twitter RSS and splits it up into email messages that it then sends to your mail account. Make it so that these messages come from a specific account and that when you reply to these messages, the replies go to a different script that can send the replies back to twitter.

Easy enough.

The only problem is making sure the email messages for twitter aren’t longer than 140 characters. That I haven’t figured out yet. The rest I could code up in an evening or two, I think, but you *would* need a server where you can run cron jobs / schedulers and set up your own mail accounts.

You would need that for pretty much any other solution as well, I should think.

Scott Page Says:

August 29th, 2008, 18:14 pm

@Leo

Have you considered creating an iGoogle page?

It is basically the regular google search page, except that you can customize it with different google gadgets that fit right within the webpage. They have a gadget that allows you to check your mail, tons of different RSS feed gadgets (I use google reader) and they have a twitter gadget that allows you to look at your feeds, plus make tweets without having to leave the page. You have a gmail account, so you have a username and password which is all you need.

You can even have different tabs similar to firefox, only they are inside the webpage, rather than the browser. For example, I have one tab for all my daily stuff, like email, calendar, weather, stocks, etc. Then I have a tab for all my news feeds. After that a tab for all the blogs I read (I actually have a feed for this site :-), plus my RSS feed. Lastly I have a tab for all my different search sites (wikipedia, babblefish, conversion calculaters, etc) I have my iGoogle page set as my homepage, and I can’t remember how I got along with out it.

Leo Says:

August 29th, 2008, 19:49 pm

I thank everyone for their comments but I think you’ve been missing something in my responses. :)

I’m interested in having everything in *one* stream of updates, in the Twitterific interface, which I really like. I’m not talking about the Twitter web interface, which is a bit clunky.

This rules out iGoogle or email as a solution, because their interfaces aren’t as nice. I try not to spend too much time in my email anyway — I process quickly and get out. Twitterific is something I can open up and scan through without responding — just step into the stream when I feel like it and step out.

Michael Says:

August 29th, 2008, 21:43 pm

Hey Leo,

I have a first version of your TwitterBot working - so let me know, if you want to check it out.

Tried to send you a Direct Message via Twitter - but for some reason I got a strange “User not found” error, so I thought I just drop you a comment instead. :)