Perl scripts send log messages to Twitter
Twittering for Geeks
© James Thew, 123RF
The Twitter service can be a platform for meaningless chatter, or you can automate access with an API and use it in ways Twitter never envisioned.
Why on earth would anybody want to use a mobile phone to let the world know they are eating a pizza with friends, are down at the gym, or have just arrived somewhere by airplane?
Microblogging, as supported by Twitter or the free identi.ca variant, has some really amazing side effects. If you want to find out what the hottest issues are for humankind right at this moment, neither Google's search engine nor Wikipedia are likely to help. Take a look at the Twitter service front page (Figure 1) and you'll see people tweeting about local political upheavals, natural phenomena, the latest movie, or sports events – often long before the daily paper's editorial team or the TV channels have even noticed something is going on.
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