Category: Technology

Twitter’s OAuth Authentication, Twikini, and Windows Mobile

As early as April this year, Twitter announced that it will drop third party applications’ authentication other than OAuth to connect to Twitter, and it happened in September 1, 2010. That means that authentication methods like keying in your username and password will not work anymore.

The OAuth method means that in order to use a desktop, mobile or online application to interface with Twitter, you will need to click a link that will bring you to the Twitter page (see sample screenshot below) to authorize the connection.

Examples of desktop applications are Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Twhirl, etc. Examples of online applications are Twitter on Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitpic, and even the various WordPress plugins. For Mobile phone, well, there are different applications for each operating system (e.g., iOS, Android, BlackBerry’s RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.).

I have read or heard from various blogs about Twitter’s absolute use of OAuth authentication. But I ignored it, thinking that I don’t develop twitter applications and so that should really be least of my concerns.

Until now, when I found out that I couldn’t use my Twitter app for Windows Mobile, Twikini, anymore.

Twikini

Twikini is a Windows Mobile client for Twitter. It’s actually one of my favorite WinMo Apps that I paid $4.95 for it to the developers, Trinket Software. It’s lean and fast, just as the developers describe:

FAST! Unlike other Twitter apps for Windows® Mobile, Twikini is written entirely in native C++ code for maximum performance and the fastest load time possible.

The software I paid for comes with free future upgrades, should there be any. Actually, without further upgrades, that latest version of Twikini I installed was already fully functional in its own right. There were a few bugs but ignorable, which usually only occur when there are connection issues.

However, starting September 1, I discovered I couldn’t open Twikini anymore, and it kept asking for my Twitter login credentials. I supplied the correct username and password –yes, but nothing is doing right. Then I read around and it has got to be because of Twitter’s new authentication policy.

And the worst thing about it is Trinket Software already stopped updating the software for my version (6.5) of Windows Mobile.

Sorry guys, with the shape WM 6.x is in, we've moved on to other projects. Twikini will be back on WP7.

Pls note: Twikini will likely stop working later this month (see http://www.countdowntooauth.com). No further updates are planned.

Now, ain’t that great? I paid for a software thinking it comes cheap for a fully functional Twitter application, when it was actually worthless to begin with. I felt like I was robbed by Twinket Software with a few dollars by selling me trash.

The Blame Game

Yet, at the end of the day, Twikini stopped working to connect to Twitter in Windows Mobile. Who’s really to blame?

On one hand is Twinket Software, the developer of Twikini, for reasons discussed above. On the second is Twitter for dropping authentication methods other than Oauth. The third and the last, Windows Mobile, for being abandoned by users and application developers alike.

More related readings about Twikini and Twitter’s OAuth

The Easiest Way to Install WordPress and Other Web Applications

If you are like me who keeps installing WordPress from time to time, to accommodate various projects, then this simple tool would probably fit the bill.

Instant Install explains how this works:

Just upload our tiny PHP installer to your server where you want the app installed, load the file in your web browser, choose an app and follow the instructions.

Once you’ve selected an app, our installer then downloads and extracts it to your server and then forwards your browser to the setup.

There are other utilities for auto-installing WordPress like Cpanel’s Fantastico and Bluehost’s SimpleScripts. The matter is: the former is hard to customize and does not always carry the latest version of the software, while the latter is a paid service unless you are a Bluehost subscriber.

I have tried installing WordPress using this script, and the installation was a breeze. You just have to be ready with the database, the database user credentials, and your login information.

I have not tried installing other apps, but the website tells us it can likewise automate installing (in so far) the following applications:

CCTV Cameras and Security

The use of CCTV camera is a detective form of security. It isn’t as effective as the preventive ones like putting up security guards in the premises to secure the area or perimeter from unauthorized entries (and exit). It only allows you to review and take action AFTER the wrong has been done.

That’s why putting up CCTV cameras alone will not ensure security of your office or building. They do require the attentiveness and skepticism on the part especially of the lobby guards.

Videos from these cameras can only be used to identify the culprit. That is, if the culprit is from the same building at all. What if he/she were a total stranger, just like in the video below.

This video was recorded from our company’s CCTV camera, which faces the office door fronting that of our neighbor’s.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJftoBNtccE&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

CCTV cameras ensure that you have a record of any crime that happened. Certainly, they do not prevent crime from happening.

Cherry Mobile D15 Meets Half of My Expectations

I was recently looking for a good backup phone. I was scrounging through some of the China phone models from Cherry Mobile, Torque and MyPhone. My initial criteria for a good backup phone were:

  • Dual sim (i.e., dual standby);
  • A good battery life (despite the dual sim capability);
  • Less bells and whistles – to support the long battery life;
  • Sleek, sturdy and small — that puts Qwerty phones out of the question (I already had a Qwerty phone);
  • A sub-P2K price;

[adsense250]

Having these in mind, I settled for the Cherry Mobile D15, features of which include:

  • Dual SIM / Dual Standby;
  • Camera;
  • FM Radio;
  • MP3 / Video Player;
  • Flashlight;
  • Micro SD Card up to 2GB;

At a price of P1,999, I guess the extra features (on top of my minimum requirements) including the FM Radio and MP3/Video Player make CM D15 worth it. And these features are basically what make up the pros.

Now, for the cons:

  • Meager battery life performance. That’s 3days for light use, 2 for moderate, and 1 for heavy use before recharging. It may be acceptable to many, but not for me who have experienced using the small and sturdy Nokia 1202 (the latter could last me 2 weeks on light use);

    UPDATE: Turning off one of the sims improved battery life dramatically. It took me 5-6 days before recharging when only 1 sim is active.

  • The keys are a little bit on the hard side;
  • Typing a message is faster than reading what you have typed. If you type real fast into its numeric keypad, you have to wait a bit for the screen to actually display your message;
  • Volume during mp3 playback is not adjustable;
  • Substandard voice-call-audio quality. Volume for voice calls are adjustable, yes. But the sound quality–it’s like listening from a tin can;
  • A headphone jack that often fails to lock into position;
  • An FM Radio where radio networks battle over one frequency. You tune-in to one station (that’s “spot on” in its digital frequency dial), and you’ll hear two network programs fighting for your attention;
  • The OS is proprietary, which I think is not optimized at all to extend battery life before recharging;
  • Picture quality of the camera, in a rate of 1 to 10, is 1;
  • The body is built of almost (if not all) plastic. But then, that’s what makes it lightweight;

Conclusion

I’m not one of those people who hop from one blog to another just to bash about the cheap cellphones’ lack of this and that “loser” features. Why look for a cheap phone when the features you really want don’t come cheap to begin with?

As the cliche goes “you get what you pay for”.

As for me, I’m half-satisfied with my purchase. At least I have my dual-sim phone and I intend to push it to its limits. For its price, I wouldn’t mind if it won’t get me even a year of extreme usage.

The upcoming release of the dual-sim phone from Nokia (the Nokia C1 or C2) is a welcome development. Hope it comes with the *needed* long battery life just like the Nokia 1202 and within the same price range.

P.S. Another insightful review of the Cherry Mobile D15: A good phone is a useful one: the Cherry Mobile D15.

Auto Zip Attachments Extension for Thunderbird 3.0

UPDATE: I have updated the extension to support the current version of Thunderbird (version 3.1).

What makes Thunderbird (TB) a kick-ass desktop mail client is its flexibility that makes it extensible through various addons/extensions and plugins.

One of my favorite extensions since TB1.5 was the Auto Zip Attachments, which automatically compresses (zip) attachments on-the-fly. This is especially useful for email messages sent with MS Excel or Word format attachments, wherein compression ratio are usually high. No more need to manually zip the files from the file explorer before attaching the same to email to save on bandwidth, which likewise translates to speedier file transfer.

Unfortunately, the developers of this extension appear to have forgotten about it and failed to update the same to keep it abreast of the new and more robust Thunderbird 3.0. It’s only compatible upto TB2.0. It seems that changing the max version in the install.rdf file is not enough. Instead, it involves editing further another file deep into the .xpi file, as described in one of the reviews for this extension.

Following the instructions from the reviews/comments on how to edit the .xpi file to make it compatible with TB3, I successfully installed the Auto Zip Attachments extension into my own TB install. I took the liberty to make that modified extension available here for everybody’s consumption. Download link below:

Download and unzip the file, then install to your TB3 desktop client. Would appreciate feedbacks for any problems or issues encountered. Hope we enjoy Thunderbird 3.0 more with this extension.

Migrating from Tumblr to WordPress

Don’t get me wrong, Tumblr is great. But with my so many experience with the different blogging engine and even other CMS’s, I always find myself going back to realizing that WordPress is way better.

It had been said many times that it is very important to choose the right blogging platform from the very start. But what do you do when you find yourself making the same mistake as others when they started out their blog?

Here are two ways you can import your posts from Tumblr to WordPress. For purposes of our test, I had more than 1,300 posts at my Tumblr blog that I tried migrating.

Tumblr2WordPress Utility

The process basically involves visiting the utility page over at benapps.net, key in your tumblr url, tweak some settings, and download the WXR (WordPress eXtended Rss) file (in .xml extension) —which by the way is the same format when you export a WordPress blog.

Then heading over to the WordPress blog you want to migrate your posts into, you would import the same just as you would a regular WordPress WXR file.

The results:

  • 1,218 posts were successfully imported, that leaves me missing with more than 100 posts — more or less 90% successful import;
  • As expected, comments were not imported. But that is something we can have a work around later with the Disqus plugin for WordPress (I was using Disqus as well in my Tumblr blog);
  • Posts like photos, audio and videos (which don’t really have post titles by Tumblr standard) have blank titles — that leaves too many polishing yet to be done;
  • Media are still hosted at Tumblr — media files weren’t imported;
  • Tags are properly reflected in the new WordPress blog;
  • WordPress can very well handle post redirection from the original Tumblr permalink structure;

The Posterous Route

If you have not yet known, Posterous has a feature that can import your whole Tumblr blog. On the other hand, WordPress.com has a feature to import from a Posterous blog. Using this route, and the same Tumblr numbers from above, we have noted:

  • Only around 700 posts were successfully imported — a dismal 50% turnout;
  • Comments were not as well imported;
  • Posts like photos, audio and videos (which don’t really have post titles by Tumblr standard) have common post titles, i.e., “Untitled” — that leaves much more polishing to be done;
  • Media files were actually imported into WordPress.com servers;
  • Actual tags were not imported. Instead, posts were categorized accordingly as Photo, Audio, Video, etc.
  • A new permalink structure, different than the original Tumblr structure that included post ID’s — this would surely lead to bad links;

Conclusion

So far, these two are the only viable solution to migrating from Tumblr to WordPress. Either way can be a pain, especially if you already have a huge blog at Tumblr. Either way, you pay a price for not starting out with the right blogging platform — charge to experience. But in the end of the day, you have to do it if you really need to.

We just hope someday there’ll be a better and smoother solution to help us Tumblr users out migrating to WordPress.

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” is Here!

The moment we WordPress users have been waiting for has finally come — the release of WordPress 3.0 codenamed Thelonious. Deuts.NET is of course already upgraded to the latest version.

Watch this video to know more about the new features of WordPress 3.0.

[wpvideo BQtfIEY1 w=400 h=224]

So far, the list of new great features we’re most excited about and would love to employ in this blog (and other blog projects as well) are:

  • A new default theme, called Twenty-Ten, paves the way to be an example on how to take advantage of the new features;
  • Custom background support lets you easily enable your heavily customized theme to support custom backgrounds and custom headers. Moreover, you can assign further custom headers for each post;
  • Multi-site Capabilities and WPMU Codebase Merge is probably is the main feature of this new release. I hope to turn this blog into a multi-site one and utilizing the domain mapping plugin would probably consolidate my other projects into one big Deuts Network site;
  • Custom Post Types reduces the need to fiddle around with custom fields. This brings WordPress to be much more of a CMS.

Some other features are, well, add to the bloat. We’ll just continue to wish for the development team to develop a WordPress Core only and that other features can be easily turned on or off.

Windows Mobile 6.5 and the Automatic Data Connection

I have a Samsung Omnia Pro B7330, a Windows smartphone (non-touchscreen) running on Windows Mobile (WinMo) 6.5. What’s one thing I hate about it is that some programs running in the background are actually using data connections without my prior intervention–i.e., without me actually initializing them.

I have installed the SPB Wireless Monitor to monitor which programs have actually invoked the use of the data connection, and at what time were data connectivity used. I discovered the following are some of the programs that were started and used data beyond my control:

  • gpsdriver.dll
  • rilgsm.dll
  • dhcp.dll
  • system
  • home.exe
  • WINDIAG.dll

They actually used minimal data, just a few KB and most are less than 1Kb, but were connecting at different times or intervals during the day. I find this not a problem if I’m using Globe’s per KB charging. But I totally switched to TIME browsing since I really need to download some emails and attachments while on the go–that which I’ll be charged based on a per 15-minute interval.

I’m not actually sure which one is causing this problem, either my particular phone unit or WinMo 6.5 itself. Nevertheless, if I don’t have the control over when these programs or processes run and use the data connection, that means I won’t have the control over my courier charges as well. There has got to be a way, which fortunately I found from this forum post: Tip: Disable Data Windows Mobile 6.5 (Disable 3G & GPRS).

The solution (which should apply to any Windows Mobile 6.5 and even previous versions):

  1. Create a new connection. Under Settings>>Connections>>GPRS>>Create New. Connects to “The Internet”. You can leave the “Access point” and other settings blank. We can also call this connection “Disable Data”;
  2. Use the connection “Disable Data” when we don’t want the phone connected to the internet via GPRS/3G. Under Settings>>Connections, click on Menu and select Advanced. Internet connection should be set to “Disable Data”;
  3. Use the regular connection when we need the access to internet. In No. 2 above, after selecting Advanced, select the regular connection for the label “Internet Connection”. For Globe subscribers this should be “myGlobe Internet”.

I know this is a bit tedious process that requires additional steps to start connecting to the internet using the data connection, unlike when I was yet using a Nokia E51 phone wherein unless internet connection is actually invoked, no data charges are incurred. But this is the only workaround so far I found. Hope this post help all other WinMo users as well.

For questions and comments, feel free to lodge them below.

Chyrp: All Good Things Come to End

UPDATE: Chyrp has been revived, and version 2.1 has been released.

Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is powered by PHP and has very powerful theme and extension engines, so you can personalize it however you want.

This is what was used to be contained in the official website of Chyrp, before it actually became unavailable.

Chyrp basically is a lightweight tumblelogging engine based on PHP and MySql. It’s a tumblelogging just like Tumblr that you can install in your own server. It’s lightweight in the sense that basically the essential or core functions are installed out of the box, to minimize use of server resources and space. I used to install it in some of my projects just to post short snippets of text, photos, audios, videos, quotes and links.

However, just two days ago, the main developer, Alex Suraci, in the Chyrp blog, posted an out of ordinary news: Chyrp is Dead; Long Live Chyrp.

As you may have noticed, progress on Chyrp has grinded to a halt, and has been in that state for a long while now. It is no longer maintained. A few people have volunteered to step in, which I appreciate, but no progress has been made. Throughout this project’s timeline I can count the repeated contributors on one hand (whom I am eternally grateful for; Twig, a lot of internal refactoring, and many fixes are the result of their hard work). It’s unhealthy for a project to rely too much on one maintainer; when they lose interest the whole thing crumbles down. This is essentially what’s happened. People keep switching to, finding, or using Chyrp, which just isn’t a good idea for me to encourage given Chyrp’s current state. So now I’m announcing it’s death.

Chyrp will always be available at GitHub. Any contributors can feel free to fork my repository; I’d be more than happy to accept patches and security fixes, or add you as a committer if you seem trustworthy and active enough. But I will no longer be working on this project, I probably won’t be in the IRC channel anymore, and I can no longer guarantee that this site will stick around through server moves and such. Unless a miracle happens and Chyrp development springs from the grave (which will be judged by actions, not words).

Chyrp has been a part of my life since I first learned to program. It grew out of what is now a “hello world”: writing a blog engine. It has spanned a decent chunk of my critically-thinking life. Thanks for being a part of this project, whether you were a user or a contributor.

We, the users of this great web application (other than WordPress, of course), are saddened by this news. We would have rather see Chyrp through till the end than witness its untimely demise. What happens now to my current projects that use Chyrp? Well, maybe I’ll just continue with the latest version and pray that it is not hacked.

UPDATE: Chyrp has been revived, and version 2.1 has been released.

In the World of Smartphones, We Are But Just Fourth Class Citizens

It’s sad to say, but, in the world of smartphones, we — the Windows Mobile phone owners, are but just fourth class citizens.

When it comes to great games and useful utility applications for smartphones, it appears, according to my observation, that developers develop apps in the following order or priority or hierarchy:

  1. iPhone
  2. BlackBerry
  3. Android
  4. Windows Mobile
  5. Symbian S60
  6. Others

Continue reading In the World of Smartphones, We Are But Just Fourth Class Citizens