Routing around Twitter

I've found Twitter to be almost useless without the Twitter IM bot running. During the day I've been using the AIM client on my Sidekick to do my Twitter updates, but lately, that's been impossible. I stumbled across a generic IM bot service called IMified that offers several hooks to various Internet services (like blog services, calendars and such) and one of the available services is Twitter. Here's how you can add Twitter to IMified so that it's almost as easy to use as the Twitter bot:

1. Add IMified as a buddy to AIM, Google Talk, MSN or Jabber.
   
2. Send your new IMified buddy a message to create your IMified account.
   
3. Send IMified a message of "M" for the menu.
   
4. Send the number of the "My Account" option from an IM client on a desktop computer. This will provide links to open up a web page on IMified with your account configuration.
   
5. Click on the "My Services" tab on IMified.
   
   
6. Click the "Twitter" icon under the "Add a New Service".
   
7. Name the Twitter service "Twitter" (or whatever you like if you are going to use multiple Twitter accounts from IMified.)
   
8. Enter your Twitter username.
   
9. Enter your Twitter password.
   
10. Click the "Add to Menu" button.
    
11. Click the "Shortcuts" tab.
    
    
12. In the shortcut field, put the prefix you'd like to use for Twitter messages. I use "tw".
    
13. Select the Twitter service you just created.
    
14. Under "Action" select "Update Status".
    
    
15. Click "Add Shortcut"

Now, to test it, go to your IM client, and send IMified this message:

/tw I am using IMified to update my Twitter. Cool!

Of course, you can use what ever message you like after the "/tw". You need to put a slash in front of shortcuts for IMified to recognize them.

If you'd like a fast way to toggle notifications on and off, add another shortcut. I use "twn". Then to toggle notification, you can type "/twn". You can also just use the IMified menus and not use shortcuts, but the shortcuts make it much faster.

Sadly, IMified doesn't support Blogger using the "New" Google authentication yet, so I can't test that. But for those you hep cats using Wordpress or Movable Type, you can use IMified to update your blog. I also like that I can peek at my Google calendar with IMified. IMified makes my Sidekick that much more useful.

But for being able to reliably update Twitter on the go using AIM, IMified seems to do the trick. You won't receive Twitter updates through IMified, but at least you can send your tweets.

Labels: internet, twitter

posted 7:37 PM | link |