Phew. When I was looking at features to add in upcoming versions of Trowl, two things jumped to the top of the list right away. The first was oAuth. I didn’t know much about the technology but knew it was relatively complex, so I figured it might take a little while to implement. The second thing was multiple account support, as it had been requested by several users. This seemed like a relatively simple change — just check multiple accounts for new tweets instead of one.

Turns out I was wrong on both assumptions. oAuth was really easy to implement except for one bug that I eventually hammered out. And multiple account support had a ripple effect that caused changes to occur just about everywhere in Trowl.

But here we are. Testing for 0.5.1 has begun, and for the most part, I’m pleased with the result. As I said, adding multiple account support affected multiple parts of the app, so here is an overview of some of the changes:

1. Login screen. I had the option of just showing a text list of authorized account names, but I decided to kick it up a notch and show account pictures. It downloads the picture (or re-downloads it, if necessary) each time you log in. So the icon you see at first may be the default "no picture" Twitter icon, or it may not be your most recent. But after a successful login, it should update.

You can also view your settings and manage your accounts from the login screen now as well.

2. New Tweet. With multiple accounts, you can choose which account to send your tweet from. If you are replying, retweeting or DMing someone in response to a tweet, the account will be "locked" to the account the original tweet was received on.

There is now also an option to enable or disable the automatic URL shortening.

3. Settings. This is where the biggest changes are, and most notably on the first tab. A lot of people, including myself, liked the simplicity of the first tab, so I tried to keep that simplicity intact as much as possible. Essentially this is the same screen that you know from previous versions, but repeated for each account that you’ve authorized for Trowl. If you only use one account, the screen is practically the same — just a little wider so that you can see your pretty avatar looking back at you. :)

A couple of notable changes: "DM Communication" and "Growl missed tweets" options are per-account, so have been moved to the first tab. Likewise, the interval for checking accounts is NOT per account, so has been moved to the second tab. If there is demand to have the interval per-account, then I will work on doing this. Unfortunately it is not a trivial change, so it will take a little bit to implement that.

And of course, you can add new accounts and remove existing accounts on the first tab. You cannot remove the last account on the list. If you need to re-authorize an account for some reason, just go through the Add Account process again. When Trowl verifies it, it will see it is the same as an existing account, and just update it with the new authorization.

4. Growls. This is an example of something that I didn’t think would change — but as I thought about it more, I realized it might have to. With multiple accounts, I figured some people will need to know what account a tweet was received on. I posted a message on the Google Group for feedback on this (thank you for all the responses!) and came up with two solutions.

The first is to append the account information next to the tweet’s author. For example, if you receive my tweet on your account, it will say something like "mageuzi «YourAccount»". There is a setting to turn this on and off in the settings.

The second is more subtle, and I think more useful. It will put the account’s avatar in the upper left of the tweet’s author’s avatar. If you recall how Twitter shows reply avatars, you’ll get the idea. You can enable this setting in the settings too. There is a slight overhead using this, since Trowl has to process the avatar pictures, but it shouldn’t negatively affect anything.

I also made it so that if you have more than one account, it will show the account the tweet came from after the timestamp. (e.g. "one hour ago on mageuzi") Timestamps only show up on displays that support it.

Okay, I think that’s it. Questions, comments, suggestions and of course bug reports are all welcome. Anything non-critical that requires a major change will have to be put off until a later update. But I will try to accommodate anything else before I release 0.5.1 for public consumption.

Thanks for testing!

Download Trowl 0.5.1 Preview

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I created these Windows Vista / Windows 7 user icons a little while ago, and thought I’d share them here.  They’re nothing special – I basically just cropped them out of a wallpaper I found.  But I figured it might save someone else the work.  And they look pretty good.  Enjoy!

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t normally make blog posts for new releases of Trowl, but I’m making an exception this time.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has used and contributed to Trowl. This is by no means a large project, but I’m still surprised by how many others like it, and use the program on a daily basis. I’m really happy that something I find useful is also useful to others! I’m incredibly appreciative of all the feedback I’ve received, especially to those of you who have helped me track down and fix bugs in the past. Trowl would not be where it is now without your support!

Second, I want to announce version 0.5. This version does not add much. As the changelog says:
* Adds support for oAuth. Trowl no longer accepts username and password for logging into Twitter. oAuth is the preferred, secure way of authenticating your account, and I’ve tried to make it as painless as possible. Any feedback is welcome!
* Twitter is changing the API for retrieving the list of friends at the end of October, so I’ve implemented that change now. Let me know if you have any problems seeing your friends list on the Settings screen.

Switching to oAuth is a relatively big change in the code, but luckily I’ve known that I wanted to do this for a while, so I was able to prepare for most of the impact in the 0.4.x versions.

While you shouldn’t see any difference in how Trowl works once you’ve authenticated your account, it will allow me to get to work quickly on the first new feature after 0.5: multiple accounts! I know several of you have asked for this, so it is now my top priority.

Thank you for your patience, and thank you again for continuing to use Trowl. :o) Remember that you can suggest new features or report bugs at any time at the Google Group.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

So, the Zune HD came out recently.  I’ve been keeping a close eye on it, because ever since it was announced, it seemed like an intriguing product – or at least more interesting that then previous Zunes.

I have to admit that I haven’t had an opportunity to use the Zune HD yet – I’ve only seen video demos and read reviews.  And the impression I get is that this is a very 1.0 product.  It’s rough around the edges (like the web browser) and the decision to display ads for twenty or so seconds before an app starts is boneheaded, stupid, ignorant and other unpleasant adjectives.

Still, there are a couple of things I like about the Zune HD, which essentially shift the focus back to music.  And this is something that seems to be brushed past in everything I’ve seen.

The biggest complaint I see against the Zune HD is lack of apps.  To quote David Pogue:

Of course, there’s an elephant in this particular room, and it’s called the iTunes App Store. At this point, those 75,000 free or cheap add-on programs, which you can download directly to the Touch, are a juicy attraction indeed.

Oh, the Zune has an app store, all right. As of today, there are exactly nine programs in the Zune App Store. Not 9,000 or 900 — nine. A calculator. Weather. A Space Invaders game. Woo-hoo.

iPod.  Zune.  What are these things?  Music players.  But what happened to the iPod?  The latest touch was advertised as a game console.  The latest nano was advertised as a Flip-like camcorder.  But what about the music?

Apple seems to think they’ve done everything that’s necessary with music.  But if there’s one thing this Zune does, it’s that it proves them wrong.  Based on what I’ve seen from both the player, and the software, the experience of playing your music is enhanced.  The first, and arguably the less important, are some very impressive visuals when playing music.  Album art, exclusive artwork, etc gives a nice presentation to your music.  I say it’s the lesser because it requires you to stare at the player to appreciate.  And just like Apple’s new LP feature, it’s questionable how much people actually do that.  After all, it’s about the music, not what’s going on with the player.  Still, it’s a nice touch that enriches the experience.

The second is the Zune pass.  There is nothing like this in iTunes.  For $15 a month, you can listen to as much music as you want.  Big deal, right?  After all, a common complaint of this is that once you stop paying, any music you haven’t purchased goes away.

But that’s not why you subscribe to this thing.  No, the reason you subscribe is to discover new music.  To listen to a new artist or a new album as much as you want before you decide whether you want to commit to it or venture further.  Suddenly, a feature like Apple’s Genius becomes so much more interesting and valuable.  Sure, sometimes it can be nice to rediscover your own music, or listen to playlists that seem nicely constructed.  But there’s nothing like discovering a new artist that you’ve never heard of, and fall in love.

But this is ignored.  No one seems to care.  This is the entirety of Pogue’s mention of Zune Pass:

Music is still at the Zune’s heart, especially if you sign up for Microsoft’s $15-a-month, all-you-can-download music-store plan. Now, you could argue that those subscriptions are something of a ripoff; the day you stop paying that monthly fee, you lose your entire music collection.

The Zune Pass, though, eases the sting: You get to keep 10 songs a month forever (90 percent of Microsoft’s songs are not copy-protected). Better yet, you can listen to your infinite playlist by logging into Zune.net from any Mac or PC, anywhere you go. If you listen to a lot of music, this deal is becoming irresistible.

In comparison, he spends twice as much space complaining about the lack of apps.

Okay, so, let me make one thing clear: apps are awesome.  I own an iPhone, and the app store is what makes an always-connected device even more connected, and even more important.  For an iPod touch, Apple is right that the games are the most important type of app for this device.  Other apps, most of which utilize a network connection, are nice but not as important, as the iPod touch isn’t always connected.

And that’s the point I’m trying to make.  Yes, apps are great.  Yes, Apple’s app store has redefined the functionality we expect from our connected devices.  But iPods and Zunes are about MUSIC.  And I see more value and innovation on that front from Zune than the iPod.

What happened?  The iPod reinvented our love of music.  Now we’re supposed to shoot video instead?

I’m not sure if the Zune HD is a killer device, but it’s a step in a direction that Apple hasn’t taken, and I look forward to what might be coming in future.  Microsoft could most definitely mess this up, and it might even be expected.  But I needed to make note of what impressed me, and I hope Apple is paying attention.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

The next version of Trowl is going to have a little feature that I’ve wanted in there since I first created the app.  I tend to use the program more for forwarding tweets to my iPhone, but there is one problem with this: you have no control.  If you want to temporarily stop push notifications, well… too bad. Your only option is to turn off your phone, and that doesn’t seem like a viable solution.

So 0.4.3 has a little feature called "DM Communication".  When you enable it, Trowl starts to monitor your DMs, whether you’ve told it to check for DMs or not.  It then looks for DMs you’ve sent to yourself in a certain format.  If it finds one, it takes the necessary action, and then removes the DM from your timeline so you don’t get a timeline polluted with messages to yourself (as amusing as that is).

Currently, there is only one command: @trowl silence [on|off]  As you can probably guess, sending the "on" command will silence Trowl until you send the "off" command.  As soon as you turn it off, it will pick up where it left off, and forward any tweets you may have missed.

And that’s it.  All you have to do is send a DM to yourself that says "@trowl silence on" and you won’t get any more push notifications until you send the equivalent ‘off’ command.  I currently don’t have any plans for adding other commands, but the foundation is now there for it — so if you’d like to see something added, let me know!

As for other features — 0.4.3 fixes a couple of bugs and streamlines the code, mostly in preparation for OAuth.  Which leads me to 0.5.0.

If all goes as planned, this will be the last version that uses basic auth.  My plan is for the next version to start using OAuth.  All this means is that you won’t have to use your username and password to access Twitter through Trowl.  But I’ll give more details on that later.

0.4.3 is out now.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

Hard to believe July is already over, but it is. And here are the pictures to prove it. My birthday and Otakon were the highlights this month. Enjoy!

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’m a little late in putting this post together, but it seems like I’ve been so busy since getting back from the convention.  Plus I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write about.  A summary seemed like the best bet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been working on refining some of the details of my original release of Trowl, and after testing it over an entire weekend of Otakon, I feel confident in releasing version 0.2 today.

This release adds most of what I outlined in my last post, as well as fixing some bugs and adding better error detection.  Specifically, I added a new type of Growl for errors.  If I get an error response from Twitter, or the app isn’t even able to make a connection to twitter.com, then you will get a Growl with the exact error.  In a future release I will try to clean this up to be a bit more user friendly.  (For example, it’s not really obvious that “Bad Gateway” is Twitter’s error for server being overloaded.)

As for actual features you can use, well: a picture is probably worth a thousand words:

These are new settings you can toggle.  Two of them I outlined when version 0.1 was released: the ability to get growls of all @replies and all DMs.  These are set to be enabled by default.

As I was using Trowl with Prowl, I realized that I didn’t really need to get push notifications of my friend’s replies to other friends.  Sometimes it was something I was interested in right away – most times it wasn’t, and I was fine waiting until later to catch up on those details.  So, I added the “Do not growl tweets that are @replies to others” for that purpose.  If you’re not using Prowl, this setting probably isn’t as important, and is not enabled by default.

There is still some cleaning up I want to do, and other feature ideas I might implement.  I’m sure there are more bugs to find as well.  In the meantime, though, feel free to download and please send your feedback.  I’m @mageuzi on twitter.

Trowl 0.2
.NET Framework 3.5 required.
Unzip to a new folder (or replace version 0.1) and run trowl.exe – that’s it!
See my original Trowl annoucement for the rest of the nitty-gritty.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

This may be the fastest an app idea of mine has gone from concept to reality.

What is Trowl?
Essentially, it is an app that outputs tweets to Growl for Windows.

Why? What does this buy me?
Honestly? If all you’re using this for is the Growl output, not much. It looks nice, and integrates with a service you may already be using, but that’s it. This version doesn’t even let you send a new tweet!

Then what’s the point?
Recently, Prowl was released on the iPhone App Store. Prowl links up with Growl on your PC so that when you get a notification, it gets pushed to your iPhone via the new Push Notification feature. In other words: you will get push notification of new tweets.

Awesome! But aren’t there already other Twitter clients that use Growl?
Yes. But:
a) Twitter clients that use Growl for Windows are limited — and buggy. If I’m going to use a full Twitter client, I’d like it to be fully functional. Alternatively I could wait until a more mature Twitter client implements GfW support, but I’m inpatient. And even then, it may not have the capabilities I’m looking for, which leads me to…
b) Most of the time, Growl support comes in the form of “friends timeline, @replies or DMs”. I don’t know about you, but if I got ALL my tweets Growled and pushed to my iPhone, my phone would never stop buzzing — which kind of defeats the purpose of push notifications. I only want to get notifications of tweets from my close friends — the people where it may be in my best interest to see their tweet(s) asap.

Sounds good. So what’s in Trowl?
This early version is a simple, proof-of-concept release that only serves to demonstrate the idea and get basic functionality working. This means:
* You can log in with your Twitter credentials, optionally saving your username & password for quick login in the future.
* System tray icon to access Settings and Exit the app.
* Ability to choose which users should have their tweets Growled.
* Ability to specify how often Trowl should check for new tweets from your chosen users.
And that’s it. I’m already working on these features:
* Setting to forward ALL @replies, regardless of who they’re from.
* Support for forwarding DMs.
* Ability to send a tweet from Trowl.
I’m open to suggestions for other features, but my goal is to keep this as lightweight as possible. Its purpose is to growl tweets, with the intent of having those growls push to your iPhone. If you want more than that, you will be better served by any of the other excellent Twitter clients out there.

Why did you name it Trowl?
Twitter + Growl = Trowl
Also, a trowel is a tool used to evenly spread mortar between bricks. You can think of Trowl as the tool that helps cement Twitter, Growl and Prowl. Yeah, I know, I’m the height of cheesery.

Does it cost anything?
Nope. However, Prowl costs $2.99 on the App Store. For me, this was a no brainer purchase, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Anything else I should know?
This app is useless without Growl for Windows, and will inform you of such if it has trouble communicating with Growl for Windows. (Although, it’s excellent at draining your Twitter API allowance, if you’re looking for that.)
This is an early version with limited error checking and an extra helping of bugs. Please let me know if you find any problems.
It is written in C#.NET and requires the .NET Framework 3.5. If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, chances are you already have this. If not, please take a trip to your friendly neighborhood Windows Update.

I need Growl for Windows. Where can I get it? How do I set up Prowl to work with it?
Please visit growlforwindows.com. You will find both answers there.

Let me at it!
Thanks for your interest. Here is the download. Just extract the ZIP to an empty folder, and run trowl.exe. After logging in, you will see the Settings screen to configure your initial friends and update interval. Remember: any problems, please contact me. (I’m @mageuzi on Twitter.) And, if you like it, spread the word! Thanks!

[update] I just want to thank Wallace B. McClure for his C# Twitter example to get me off on the right foot, as well as DotNetThis for his simple string encryption example. I’m also adding a few screenshots after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

Having my phone for a couple of weeks now, and realizing how difficult it can be to find true gems on the App Store, I thought I would give a few thoughts on some apps I’ve downloaded, tried and enjoyed.

Whole Foods App: I’m still searching for a good recipe app, but this is a decent start.  You can browse, narrow down and search for recipes that Whole Foods hosts on their website.  And their recipes are actually pretty good, presented with a nice UI.  It also has a feature that lets you find nearby Whole Foods store, utilizing the GPS — nice, but not the most compelling part of this app.

Flight Control: This game is in the top ten, and the concept sounded interesting, so I was immediately curious.  After reading a couple of reviews, I decided to take a chance — and it is, in fact, a very fun game! The basic idea is that you have an aerial view of a landing strip, with planes flying in from all directions and speeds, which you have to safely land.  Doing so is just a matter of drawing a flight path from the plane to the runway.  There are different plane types that have to go to different runways, and as the game progresses there are more planes on screen at a time, and paths often cross.  It’s simple, but challenging — always an addictive combination.

Jungle Bloxx: Think of a cross between Boom Blox and Jenga, and you’ll get the idea.  I’ve really only played the demo so far, but the $2.99 price for the full version is tempting.  Again, the premise is simple: there is a jewel balanced amongst a pile of blocks, and so you have to destroy the blocks in such a way that the jewel lands safely in a pile of sand.  If it lands anywhere else, you risk breaking it.  More points are awarded if you "land" the jewel with fewer destroyed blocks.

Jukebox: I think this only came out recently, since the new 3.0 firmware lets apps read the iPod data on your iPhone.  Basically it is like the Music Quiz game that came on older iPods — but spruced up nicely.  Well worth the $.99, especially if you have a lot of music.

WordPress: Update your blog and manage comments on the go with the official WordPress app.  Fairly straightforward, but I get a kick out of being able to control the fundamental details of your blog on the go, and in such a simple way.

Finally, saving the best for last:

Shopper: Ever since I owned a Windows CE device, I’ve been wanting a way to digitize my shopping lists.  But I don’t just want a way to bring a list of items to the store.  I also want a way to make notes of them as I think of them (quickly!) and check them off as I shop.  For a while I was using Google Tasks.  Unfortunately, though, it is a rather new addition to Google’s repertoire and is not only sparse on features, but is difficult to maintain on the go.  Also, it is meant more as a task list (go figure) and is more tightly integrated with Gmail than a standalone tool.  So after getting my iPhone, I looked to see what apps had been developed for this purpose.

There are several, but the $.99 Shopper app caught my attention.  It looked to have a nice interface that was easy to use and manage.  Plus, it had a database of pre-loaded grocery items.  And, it lets you specify what aisle these items are at in the store.  From there, you can set up profiles for each of the stores you visit frequently.  You can specify where they are located, as well as the order of their aisles.  Why?  So that when the phone senses you are near to one of your stores (using its built-in GPS), it can switch to that layout and display your shopping list in the exact order things will be in the store!

You can also specify prices for your items (unfortunately not on a per-store basis), take photos and make templates for common weekly shopping trips, or for ingredients for certain recipes.  For such a cheap app, it is powerful yet simple to use — and may finally be the answer to my digital shopping list fantasies.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I think most geeks wish for a completely connected world: where all the gadgets they invest in can talk to one another, and information can be shared without restriction.  Needless to say, it is a wish because it has not yet happened.  We come close, of course.  But nothing is ever perfect.

And, sadly, I am not starting off this post with such a wish because the iPhone makes it a reality.  Rather, after using my new gadget for a few days, I want to point out how far we’ve come — and how far we have yet to go.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’m not usually a big fan of commercials, but as I was exercising yesterday, a Progressive commercial appeared.  I was listening to music, so I didn’t hear the sound track.  But it let me concentrate on the visuals, and I have to say I was a little amused.  Two frames in particular showed that…

… it was well framed…

… as well as downright silly

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’m a bit late on this one, but May’s Photo a Day is complete and ready for viewing. As spring turns into summer, the wildlife comes out. We saw a couple good movies too.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

When I switched to using WordPress as my "primary" blog, I wanted the transition to be as straightforward as possible.  I’d like to think I achieved that, although there has been a slight sticking point related to the posting of comments.

To keep things clean and simple, I decided to make commenting only possible on the original WordPress entry.  After all, that’s where the "real" post lives.  I made the mistake of requiring a name and e-mail address, though, since I thought it would cut down spam.  Which it didn’t, as it turns out.

So, I have removed the requirement to enter a name and e-mail when commenting on a post.  I hope this is an acceptable compromise — I know some of you have been reluctant to comment on my posts because of the hassle of going to the WordPress blog, but really I’ve tried to make it so that it is no more complex or difficult than commenting via LJ.  With this change I just made, it’s now even simpler.

Of course, having said that, if you guys still don’t like it, I’ll re-enable comments on LJ.  I’d rather hear feedback from you all than try to cater to my obsessive compulsive need for organization. ;o)

Just an FYI, though: besides the spam issue, I did have another reason for requiring an e-mail.  E-mail addresses were never, ever made public-facing.  (i.e., there was no way for a spambot to harvest an e-mail from your comment.)  The actual reason for this was because if you have an account set up at Gravatar, it will display your avatar instead of the grey, generic "ghost man" icon.  For those who don’t know, Gravatar hashes your e-mail address so that whenever you comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog with that e-mail, it will display your unique avatar.  It’s not locked down to just one site — like LJ.

Anyway, thanks for understanding, and let me know if you guys still hate commenting over at mageuzi.com.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.

I knew it! I knew that as soon as I finished my last post on some of the things I like (and dislike) about Windows 7, that I would forget something. And I’m sure this won’t be the last of the follow-up posts.

But as I popped open my laptop’s lid, and Windows 7 sprung to life, I realized I had forgotten to mention my experiences with how it runs on a portable. The RC is the first time I’ve run it on a laptop, and I was curious to see how it would work, since there had been a lot of discussion about changes in the OS geared towards laptops.

Vista was no slouch when it came to laptops. Well, decently-powered laptops anyway. It would go to sleep relatively quickly, and it would come back from sleep in a decent amount of time as well. This is already markedly better than XP, where putting the laptop to sleep was like spinning a roulette wheel: would it come back afterwards? Your bet is as good as mine.

Windows 7 makes the sleep process even faster, though, without losing any of the stability. It always amazes me when I open the laptop lid, and in an instant the Windows 7 login screen is there waiting. Having said that, though, I was disappointed to find one minor Vista bug still hanging around: even though the login screen appears, you can’t actually type your password for a few seconds afterward. Even though the cursor is blinking in the password field as if it can accept input, it just ignores you. I’ve always felt that could have better feedback to the user.

Another thing that I’ve heard mentioned is that Windows 7 improves the most-sacred of laptop specs: battery life. I was especially interested in this, since my laptop got about 3 hours in power saver mode under Vista — good, but not great. In my very unscientific day-to-day use, Windows 7 might be getting me half an hour extra. Maybe. It’s a hard thing to measure, but that seems to be my experience so far. Not bad, but nothing really to get worked up over.

I tend not to put my laptop into hibernate mode, so I don’t have any comments on that.

Another minor thing that I was surprised about: the Dell laptop I use has built in media buttons on the front, such as volume control and media playback. Without having to install any drivers, or configure anything, these buttons worked right after setup. It was a nice surprise, as I had almost resigned myself to not being able to use these buttons until Dell released updated drivers. And, of course, all Fn controls, such as changing screen brightness, work without issue. Nice!

So overall, it does seem like Windows 7 is more laptop-friendly, keeping with the theme that Windows 7 builds atop of what already made Vista great.

Originally published at Mageuzi's WordPress blog. Please leave any comments there.