retweewter V1 (C) 2009 Ralf Laemmel

README

What is that retweewter?

retweewter is a Twitter application. It is a toy application. It's
absolutely useless, equally redundant and nearly dysfunctional, but it
is fun doing this sort of code and app, and the author will keep it
alive for some time (such as mins to days) until he lacks further
interest or faces the outburst of unsatisfied users.

retweewter runs (or could run) continuously to retweet certain search
results to a designated user. The relevant tweets are identified by
(hashed) search strings. With retweewter, some community can agree on
a specific tag to be used throughout their messages and thereby
trigger those tweets to be aggregated on an designated twitter
account.

If this readme is up-to-date, then it is true that the author of
retweewter actually runs one installation of the app that can serve a
number of communities as described above. If you like to be covered by
that server (without any warranty and liability on the author's site),
please send the "input" as described below.


What input is needed for setting up retweewter (retweeting) for you?

 - user: the Twitter user to whom retweets go as updates
 - password: the password of the user (needed by the app clearly)
 - tag: search string (the heading "#" is added if it's not there)

See the FAQ for ways of submitting that information.
(See contacting the author.)


How should I think of retweewter's behavior?

 - retweewter only checks every few minutes or so for new
   tweets. (Most of the time retweewter is sleeping.) It depends on
   the search function of Twitter to find tweets that involve the hash
   string. Because of that, there may be some additional delay.
   Use some proper software instead of retweewter if you can't wait.

 - retweewter uses the Twitter API in a manner that it only looks at a
   small window of tweets. The current version does not use any paging
   and database support. The way retweewter is configured it could
   miss tweets if there are many (say 10, perhaps even less) within
   the turn around cycle of retweewter. That's entirely your problem.

 - retweewter tries to identify retweets that are no longer
   appropriate because the underlying tweet (from which the RT was
   generated) is gone. This feature is pretty experimental. It is
   entirely possible that the windowing approach of retweewter causes
   false positives and negatives. In fact, this whole deletion
   business made the experiment somehwat interesting.


More Frequently Asked Questions

 - Is retweewter free software or what? You are free to try using
   it. You are not supposed to pay me anything or anyone for this app.
   I might eventually publish the sources, and if so, the software is
   even more free.

 - Is retweewter developed in Haskell or what? It should have been
   clearly! The only reason that it was done in Java is that I am
   using Twitter programming in my Java-based advanced programming
   class and those students are clever enough to tell Haskell by the
   file extensions of the programs.

 - How can I contact the author of retweewter and stay in touch with
   the irrelevant details of retweewter's future? You can use the tag
   #retweewter in order to be retweeted to @retweewter, or you reply
   to @retweewter, and you may as well follow @retweewter. You can as
   well bother the author directly -- this is @notquiteabba.

 - Can't you think of a more convenient way for registering with
   retweewter? Sure I can, but this application isn't serious at all.
   If I end up getting users, I need to work on scalability -- for
   which I simply don't have time. However, I might add a
   twitter-based subscription feature anyway. More likely, I will
   discontinue retweewter very soon.


Thanks,
Ralf Laemmel