Twitter to WordPress via ifttt - limitations

Weeks after Google's Day of Infamy i'm still failing to fully replace Google Reader Shares. Recently I gave up on Tumblr, Posterous, the zombie version of Google Reader, and some screen-scraping attempts to turn G+ streams into feeds.

Lately I've been focusing on my @jgordonshare tweets and tonight I tried using ifttt to create a WordPress feed-equipped archive of tweets.

It was easy to setup the ifttt task to turn the tweets into WP posts. I used a "1 button install" Dreamhost [1] WordPress instance I've been testing. I had to turn on XML-RPC publishing (used by Windows Live Writer, MarsEdit, etc) and provide a WordPress username and password [2].

The ifttt doesn't trigger immediately after tweet creation. I assume it checks the Twitter stream every 15-30 minutes. I manually triggered a check from the ifttt dashboard.

Here's an example of what I got

Just testing iftt tweeting to wp (sorry). http://t.co/GbR8Qdud

... Just testing iftt tweeting to wp (sorry). http://t.co/GbR8Qdud...

Yeah,  not to impressive. The problem is a tweet is simply a string, it has no special structure, no way to distinguish URL from my commentary from page title from annotation (not that there's room for all that). Tweets are much simpler entities than old-style Google Reader shares.

The experiment did work, but the result isn't terribly interesting.

So the quest goes on ...

[1] Use the code "KATEVA" or this link and you are supposed to get 50% off your 1st year costs and I get an equal saving as credit.
[2] Obviously you should create a user for this purpose and create a unique password. IFTTT has to know your credentials.

See also:

• Dreamhost - apparently the kickbacks work 6/2010
• Google reader shared items to Facebook 3/2009 - Google's glory days - before the Fall
• Loving Google Reader - Shared post feed 9/2008 - Google's apex
• My reader shares are back for now - thanks to Keakon 11/2011 - sweet hack, but a bit of a security risk
• Social wrestling: Google Reader, Twitterfeed, Blogger and Facebook 4/2010 - twitterfeed is still around
• Filtering my Google Reader Share with Yahoo Pipes 9/2008 - never quite worked, but an interesting example
• Using Bloggers undocumented label (category) feeds and Yahoo Pipes to create a tech opinion feed out of Gordon's Notes - 2/09 - fiddling
• Tweeting Google Reader Shares and Notes via feedburner 10/2010 - we assume Google will axe feedburner in 2012
• FreeMyFeed - Getting Twitter feed to Google Reader - turning twitter into rss 4/2009
• Microblogging and Google Reader: Tumblr Fails 11/2011
• After the fall of Google Reader: Posterous, Tumblr and Zootool with Twitter on the side 11/2011. I haven't tried Zootool yet.

How to learn what your current AT&T mobile contracted services are

AT&T has the lowest customer service rating of American mobile phone companies. Of course that's like asking what's worse - Ebola or Rabies?

This is not because of their retail staff. They must give them powerful drugs, because, despite working for a moderately evil corporation, they're remarkably cheerful.

Their web site though, that's part of what makes them "Rabies" rather than just "Ebola".

For example, for the past few days I've been trying to follow up on some extensive bill slashing changes. In particular I've been trying to find a current contract summary for our family plan. I think I've found the best that ATT offers, but they have one of the worst web sites I've ever come across. [1]

As of Nov 2011 try this. Don't click on the tabs, but mouse over to see the substructures. Note you may have to authenticate repeatedly.

• Go to your AT&T mobile account page. Look at the top menu structure. It will say myAT&T, with "tabs" like "Overview", "Bill & Payments" and so on. Depending on the services you use some are not useful, but they will still appear. The tabs that are useful for a mobile-only customer are
  
  • Bill & Payments: see current bill statement
  • Wireless: usage and recent activity
  • Profile: user information
• From user information look for "Contract Information". Click Customer Service Summary and Contract. Now you get a popup window. In there you find several options including two that, despite their names, both show a similar PDF (these links may actually work as shortcuts once you're authenticated):
  
  • Wireless customer agreement: This is the real deal. CSS plus six pages that summarize your true contract [2]
  • Customer service summary (wireless): Just the CSS
  • Alternatively, AT&T's "Your Phone CSS" email provides this link with goes to a screen I can't find when I navigate the site, in fact it seems to be a outside of the tabs they define and possibly a separate web site: https://www.wireless.att.com/olam/loginAction.olamexecute?target=CSS. There's a trick here. Unless you read carefully, you'll hit the "continue" button -- that will just take you back to the main site. Instead, look for the link under the wireless number drop down and click that. You get the PDF contract summary.

Note that under the Wireless tab is a "Rate Plan" link, but it only shows voice plan.

So, in summary, to determine your actually currently contracted services for a family plan you need to print/view a PDF for each individual family member and do the sums to produce an integrated view.

I wonder if there's a medical term for the psychosis induced by dealing with AT&T?

Next up: How to track SMS use.

[1] The primary flaw is that AT&T mixes marketing with service. There are other reasons, but that's the primary dysfunction. What I want to know is mixed with what they want to sell me. A secondary reason, is that they choose not to invest in areas that allow customers to see what their contracts are. Those investments have a low return on investment and will not contribute to someone making VP. It's just a happy accident that it works this way.

[2] Update: AT different times I got different PDFs for different users. Only my wife, a secondary number, produced the full six page report when I requested a "wireless customer agreement".

Update 12/11/11: I've studied the PDFs in more detail. They are quite hard to interpret, particularly for a family plan, but, with some study, they do show the current contract. I think the "wireless customer agreement" is a copy of the original contract, but the "customer service summary" is the current contract.

Deleting Google Profile breaks picasa share links

I  recently deleted my Google Profile. The link explains why.

I expected consequences and I am not disappointed.

Today many of my share links to my Picasa albums have broken. The albums are still gone, but the share links don't work.

It's easy to see why. Here's a link I shared last week to one of my recent albums. I've bolded the problem (omitting the auth key)

https://picasaweb.google.com/113810027503326386174/WildcatVsEagleNov2011

Here's today's link to the same album ...

https://picasaweb.google.com/jfaughnan/WildcatVsEagleNov2011

When I deleted my profile I removed my 2007 identity: 113810027503326386174. With the advent of G+ that identifier was the basis of shared image links. When I removed G+, those links broke.

Fortunately I hadn't shared that many albums recently. I got singed, but not burned.

I feel like I escaped the burning house of G+ just in time. Future exits will be far more difficult -- if not impossible.

Google doc share links cannot be changed

Google uses the secret share link feature in a few places. In several places the share link can be changed. I think of that as an essential feature; a way to correct a share mistake or deal with an escaped link.

Google Apps shared item links, however, cannot be changed.

Nobody talks about this.

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who actually uses Google Docs.

Blogger is dying more quickly than expected

I've been expecting Blogger to die, but since Google has been porting it to the "new look" I thought it had a year or two left.

Today when I search in Blogger I'm getting results sorted from oldest to newest, and search ends at 2006. I'm seeing this in both the old and new UI. In the new UI, of course, search is very limited; in particular you can't navigate large numbers of results readily.

Blogger is showing more of these inconsistent and failed behaviors. If Blogger were human, I'd say it had an untreatable cancer.

The good news is that WordPress.com's Blogger Import works fairly well -- though it omits all draft posts.

The bad news is that blogging is tracing the same trajectory I remember with web site authoring. In the 90s web site authoring tools were accessible to relatively non-technical amateurs. By the 00s that market had gone away, and quality "content management systems" were aimed at professionals and businesses. I'm seeing the same thing happening with blogging -- it's becoming a professional activity dominated rather than an amateur form of communication. The number of interesting blogs expressing personal opinions rather than muted convention is also diminishing.

These things are easier to understand if you live in a climate that has ice and snow and darkness.

Lion: Only 3.5 stars on Apple's App Store

I have no compelling reason to move our family accounts from MobileMe to iCloud, though Find My Friends might be nice. Still, I'd probably do it -- except that I want to keep my iPhone and OS X Contacts in sync. Moving to iCloud for my iPhone means I need to move to iCloud on the desktop -- and i have only one Lion machine. Two others are Snow Leopard and a fourth won't run Lion at all.

I'd need to put Lion on the dual core MacBook, where it will run slowly even with encryption off. It should be fine on my i5 memory loaded desktop.

The bigger problem is that I'll need to upgrade software. FileMaker for sure, and probably a few other odd apps need Rosetta. The experience is guaranteed to be painful and expensive.

Apple's App Store is not encouraging. Lion gets 3.5 stars there, and the negative comments (only ones I bother with) are persuasive. That is, they complain about issues I know are real (such as software upgrades).

Meh. I'll wait until March or so. Maybe Lion and iCloud will both look better then.

Standard feeds for G+ Profile streams

When G+ Profiles first appeared, I recall that public posts had feeds.

Those feeds disappeared. Now G+ is more of a walled garden than Facebook.

Russell Beattle created an RSS feed app for G+, but then Google's AppEngine price increases put him out of business.

Now Jeff Turner has one ...

Google+ to RSS Feed

This site is still in beta so it might go down from time to time. If you have any issues please submit a issue to Github Issues. I had to up the cache to 60 minutes so we don't run out of API calls in a single day.

Here's my (100% public) John Gordon feed via nodester: http://googleplusrss.nodester.com/107785880910936077757.

It renders in GR. Next I'll try using http://ifttt.com/  and Feedburner to turn my G+ posts into something I can own and others can consume. I hope Jeff can make a business of this somehow.

Markets route around aberrations, and the Net is routing around Evil+.

Update: I tried a feedburner version of Jeff's converter but IFTTT didn't like it. It complained "Feed has items without valid urls".

On the other hand, ifttt will share G+ Posts to Tweets using yet another G+ to feed service - Plu.Sr. Looks like there are more than a few of these! Talk about routing around evil.

So here I am on Plu.Sr, where first sentence becomes feed title: http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=107785880910936077757&short=true.

From this ifttt creates posts on my unused Posterous blog: http://jgordonshare.posterous.com/ -- but only if autopost is turned off.

I tried this one with Feedburner, but it complained: "The URL does not appear to reference a valid XML file. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 77: The reference to entity "T" must end with the ';' delimiter."

It's just for play at the moment, but it looks like we'll have some options. At least until Google terminates my John Gordon Profile.

I've also set up a ifttt action to http://twitter.com/#!/jgordonshare from my G+ shares.

Next step will be to get my wordpress microblog working. Then IFTTT will create wordpress posts, and that will in turn have a feed and a twitter stream.