Finding and using your Twitter RSS feeds

At one time Twitter users had full access to their RSS feeds. Since the re-design of the Twitter universe some of these features were removed. However, they were not disabled and so access to these items is still available.

In this post I will show you how you go about finding out the RSS feed for your Twitter timeline and your public facing Twitter lists.

TWITTER TIMELINE

Before the Twitter re-design all one had to do to find an RSS feed was to browse to a user’s profile page. Since this feature has been disabled we now need to do a bit of simple hacking to the URL of the user’s profile. To do this follow the simple steps below:

1. Go to Twitter.com and search for a user. Select the user for the feeds you wish to receive. You will get a URL similar to this – https://twitter.com/#!/KenCenerelli

2. To subscribe to this user’s feed we will need to modify the standard Twitter user’s RSS feed URL which looks like the following – http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/[UniqueID].rss Every Twitter user has a unique id. To find one you can use a service like http://www.idfromuser.com Searching within the site for my name I know my id is 386101798.

So when I replace [UniqueID] in the standard URL my RSS feed becomes http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/386101798.rss

I can also elect to use the Twitter user name in the URL as well. An example with my name would be http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/KenCenerelli.rss

3. You can then subscribe to this list in your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook. It can also be placed on a blog as an RSS feed if you do not have a Twitter feed widget installed.

TWITTER LISTS

RSS feeds are also available for your public facing Twitter lists. Note that this functionality is not available for any private lists.

1. As above we need to modify the standard URL for Twitter lists – http://api.twitter.com/1/[Author]/lists/[Twitter List Name]/statuses.atom

To create an RSS feed of a Twitter list all we need to do is change the [Author] to the name of the list creator and the [Twitter List Name] to the name of the Twitter list they are publicizing.

As an example, if you wish to see my public list on my hometown of Guelph, Ontario, Canada you would browse to
http://api.twitter.com/1/KenCenerelli/lists/guelph-ontario-canada/statuses.atom

2. You can then subscribe to this list in your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook.

My CTTDNUG presentation slides and source files

I have published my slides and source files on An Introduction to Configuring and Extending Umbraco CMS from my presentation to Canada’s Technology Triangle .NET User Group (CTTDNUG). The slides are also available on SlideShare.

Please contact me if you have any follow up questions.

My CTTDNUG presentation on Configuring and Extending Umbraco CMS

My presentation, An Introduction to Configuring and Extending Umbraco CMS, to Canada’s Technology Triangle .NET User Group (CTTDNUG) is just five short days away on Wednesday January 25, 2012.

The presentation will be at the Manulife Financial building in Kitchener, Ontario from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. At the end of the talk there will be raffle draws for Umbraco items as well as additional products from our group sponsors.

Umbraco is a free, open source content management system (CMS) that was launched in 2004. Since then it has grown into one of the premier CMS solutions available to ASP.NET developers. Umbraco is primarily written in C#, stores data in a number of relational databases (commonly Microsoft SQL Server) and works on Microsoft IIS.

This session will provide an overview of how easy it is to get up and running using Umbraco. Through an IIS web deploy, a developer can create a basic site in minutes. Demos in this session will extend the usability of the basic site by integrating existing ASP.NET functionality like User Controls to develop reusable components that can be used in future projects. A discussion of document types, data types, templates, XSLT Files, and stylesheets will round out what you need to get you started with Umbraco.

Please register for this event through the following link.

Note that you need to log into the CTTDNUG site to register. If you aren’t a registered member, click the Register link in the top right corner and follow the steps. Registration is FREE!

Feel free to contact me if you need additional information.

Euro 2012 Clock – another new Windows Phone 7 app

I have added another new Windows Phone 7 app, entitled Euro 2012 Clock, to the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is my third in three days.

This app counts down the days left until the start of the UEFA EURO 2012 football tournament in Poland and Ukraine. The official start date is June 8, 2012.

Also included are links to both the official UEFA website and Wikipedia so you can access additional information quickly and easily.

Click the button below to download it today!

And when you have downloaded it, please go to the About page and add your rating/review.

Also, hit this link to see a listing of all my other WP7 apps available for download within the marketplace.

2014 Brasil Clock – another new Windows Phone 7 app

I have added another new Windows Phone 7 app, entitled 2014 Brasil Clock, to the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is my second in two days.

This app counts down the days left until the start of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brasil. The official start date is June 12, 2014.

Also included are links to both the official FIFA website and Wikipedia so you can access additional information quickly and easily.

Click the button below to download it today!

And when you have downloaded it, please go to the About page and add your rating/review.

Also, hit this URL to see a listing of all my other WP7 apps available for download within the marketplace.

Forza Azzurri – my new Windows Phone 7 app

My latest Windows Phone 7 app entitled Forza Azzurri has hit the Windows Phone Marketplace.

As I love all things about Italian football/soccer, I decided to create an app dedicated to Italy’s National Football team. This is the first of its kind in the marketplace.

The app includes some history on the men’s team and it also lists their FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship records. There are also lists of players with the most appearances and the overall top scorers. Also included is the Italian National anthem as well as links to various websites that provide in-depth material.

This app is ideal for settling arguments or for learning more about they are called the Azzurri.

Click the button below to download it today!

And when you have downloaded it, please go to the About page and add your rating/review.

Also, hit this URL to see a listing of all my other apps available for download within the marketplace.

Finally, stay tuned for two more of my football-themed apps to appear in the marketplace shortly. I will blog about each as they are released.

Using rel=”me” to create a unified web presence

I see a lot of software developers that have multiple social media accounts. They use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a personal website or blog to promote themselves and their ideas. Many developers use these platforms to share tips on how to use products better or to share how they built a kluge for a problem that was baffling them. And some want to do that plus promote themselves to any interested job creator who comes knocking. Something I would call branding for software developers.

The question becomes though is how to create a unified web presence for all your social media sites? Specifically, how does the search engine know you are linking to another website or online identity attached to you? The answer lies on the rel=”me”.

The tag is designed to link different web properties together when they are owned by the same person. According to the Microformats.org rel=”me” page, the value is “used to indicate profile equivalence.” It is “used on hyperlinks from one page about a person to other pages about that same person.” This will then establish “a bi-directional rel-me link and confirming that the two URLs represent the same person.”

The end result will be identity consolidation. This is “the ability for a user to indicate that one or more identities, profiles, URLs across different sites all represent that same user.”

Many social media sites, including Twitter, have already started adding the rel=”me” tag to user’s profiles. However, many users do not link back to these sites from their own blogs and websites using this tag.

From my own experience I know this attribute cannot be added to flat URLs on about.me or URLs within LinkedIn. This is generally because these sites already include these tags. However, as you can see in the photo below, I have added the tag to my LinkedIn profile button on my WordPress.com website so search engines can make the link between my two sites that much easier.

WordPress Daily Post 10/04/2011

• The “Big Five” IT trends of the next half decade: Mobile, social, cloud, consumerization, and big data

  In today’s ever more technology-centric world, the stodgy IT department isn’t considered the home of innovation and business leadership. Yet that might have to change as some of the biggest advances in the history of technology make their way into the front lines of service delivery. Here’s an exploration of the top five IT trends in the next half decade, including some of the latest industry data, and what the major opportunities and challenges are.

  tags: Trends Mobile SocialMedia

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

WordPress Daily Post 09/28/2011

• Dude, Where’s My Mango Update? – Canadian Developer Connection

  So, with all that said, when can you expect the Mango update to be released by the 3 major carriers supporting Windows Phone in Canada? The answer is “soon”. I can’t tell you the exact date because that is something that is managed not only by Microsoft but also by our carrier partners, so saying a date right now on this blog would make a commitment not only of Microsoft but of our carrier partners as well.

  tags: Microsoft WindowsPhone7 MSDN Mango

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Book Review – Windows Phone 7 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress)

• Author: Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati
• Paperback:368 pages
• Publisher:Apress; 1 edition (May 26, 2011)
• Language:English
• ISBN-10:1430233710
• ISBN-13: 978-1430233718

I was looking forward to reading this book since I learned about it. I find
sometimes I encounter a problem when I am coding a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) app but
I am unsure about how to find the answer. Sometimes the index helps or I just
browse to a section of a book I think will help. But mostly you have to hunt
around to find a complete answer to your problem.

Windows Phone 7 Recipes focuses on common problems faced by most developers and then proceeds to
show what the solution is. Each chapter delves into these problems to
demonstrate not only what the answer is but how it was derived, the code you
need to implement it on your project and how to run the compiled code on your
WP7 phone.

This book goes from introductory problems to things that can
be pretty complex. So, it is nice to see that this book devotes full chapters to
both gestures and sensors. There is also a chapter on working with the cloud to
deal with feed readers and push notifications. Finally there is also a chapter
on testing to ensure your apps can get into the Windows Marketplace on first
pass through.

The only drawback with the book is that it could have
covered some other topics that present problems for WP7 developers. Things like
XNA are only mentioned in passing. As well, binding to external sources like XML
files could have easily found a home in this book. My final quibble is that the
book does not mention whether source code for the chapter examples are available
for download on the cover or in the book. I had to browse to the book’s page on
Apress.com to confirm that they are available.

Overall though this book is an excellent resource for helping to solve those common problems we all run
into while creating WP7 apps.