One status to rule them all

In some moments of escapism from my Dissertation I have managed to setup my Twitter account to become that one status to rule them all. Finally fulfilling the role it has always threatened to do.

A while ago I told you I had a Twitter account and that I had got it showing up in the sidebar of my blog. That was the first step of implementing Twitter as my status to rule them all. What I really wanted to do, was to use Twitter to show my status on my blog, my status to my Twitter friends (which there aren’t many of so signup and add me) and as my status on MSN.

Now to do this wasn’t that simple. I had to first sort out Adium to show my status messages on MSN. Due to a limitation of the library the Adium devs use this is not possible to do straight from Adium. In order to get the MSN personal messages to show up in Adium I had to setup a Jabber account and with that an MSN transport. I setup an account with a jabber server found at bgmn.net and registered with the MSN transport. It worked and I was able to see my buddies MSN status messages from Adium.

Now with that up and running I had to solve the problem of making my Twitter status show up in the status message of Adium/MSN. Enter the Adium Xtras site and this applescript. Once the script was installed I followed the instructions found on the download page, created a status with %_Twitter in the text field and saw my Twitter status appear there. So my MSN buddies could now see my Twitter status and I was well ont he way to my one ruling status. Now whenever I changed my Twitter status my MSN status changed to mirror it.

I now had to sort out how I changed my Twitter status. I had been using a litle app called Twitterrific which is a little menu bar app. It had a bit of an issue though, it quite often lost connection with the Twitter server and would spring up a little error window to me so, not really what you want when in the middle of a paragraph. So I set out to look for an alternative and what better alternative than something which involves the one application to rule them all,QuickSilver. I came across this applescript which added an action to QuickSilver called Tweet and allowed me to post my Twitter status from QuickSilver.

It worked well, except there was one thing I didn’t like about it. I was unable to tell if the post to Twitter had worked. With a little more searching I found a version that added a little Growl notification to the process. It added something that ensured a Growl notifcation popped up on my display when the Tweet was succesful.

So now, I am able to control my Adium status, my blog status and my Twitter status all from the same place. Plus I have been able to sort out something I’ve wanted for ages, tobe able to use QuickSilver to alter my status as well as to send Instant Messages.

I don’t use twitter and rarely am on IM, but reading this post makes me want to do it. I think it’s because I love all things Quicksilver.

Hehe. Well Quicksilver is indeed the work of a Genius! I’ve managed to get a nice Twitter ‘t’ to appear on my growl notification now, thanks to an automator app and img2icns!

Phil, great post I’ve been wanting to do something like this, now I can.

Glad you like Wess. The wonders of QuickSilver sometimes feel endless! ha!

Phil - I couldn’t figure out how to use the growl script. What do I add it too?

Wess: If you download the script found here and place it in your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions folder, then re-launch Quicksilver you should be able to see it as an action. So by typing in your tweet then tabbing to the second pane and starting to type tweet it should show as an applescript action.

[...] Geek Alert: Then I found this post, which is a great blog from what I can tell, that helps you bring in twitter, adium (chat client) and quicksilver. Nice work Phil. [...]

[...] I recently blogged about how I set it all up, if you want to take a look. I’m looking for a nicer way to do my blog status so it’s not really included in the post. __________________ My Mac’s: 20" iMac Core Duo with 2gb RAM; 14" iBook G4 My Blog [...]

Phil, you’re a genius. I followed your post and had no hiccups (other than the CSS styling for my twitter status on my site.) Thanks for writing this up.

[...] I’m there for the post, I love being able to see what they are up to. Thanks to Phil’s post on setting up twitter to work with Quicksilver, my blog sidebar is now twitterfied. If you are on [...]

Glad you got it to work! I like how you have it set, how did you get it to show? I don’t like how mine is showing at the moment!

Phil, I got it to display that way using the javascript code in the twitter site and then just CSS with divs and classes. I’ll show you later.

Cheers Bro that would be good.

So I’ve noticed my status only shows up in safari on my mac less than half the time. Any ideas?

Yeah I noticed that as well. I’m not sure, but when I checked Twitter earlier, or late last night, they were having problems with the server I think. It’s all there now and working though.

EDIT: I’m just wondering if this is because of the way you are displaying it, although I’m not sure. It should work if its the javascript from the Twitter badges. I use the RSS feed to display mine, but I’m not really sure.

[...] One status to rule them all at electric weekend (tags: twitter hacks) Posted by Brandon { article rss } Trackbacks [...]

Forgive my stupidity, but I can’t seem to follow the first few steps of this post in order to get my friends’ MSN personal messages to show up in Adium.

How did you set up the Jabber account and register with the MSN transport? I feel like I’m missing some vital step…

Hi Marty, yeh I just read over that and I didn’t really explain what to do. Do you already have a Jabber account?

I set mine up with the BGMN.net server through a chat client called PSI. Once that was setup and logged on, I went to general>service discovery. In the Service Discovery window, I clicked on MSN Transport and then on the key icon at the top, which is the register button. Once there I entered my MSN account details and registered.

This should mean you are registered on the MSN transport. To check there should be a bot/agent/transport group which should contain the contact msn.bgmn.net. You may be asked to authorise all your contacts, but this should only happen once.

If I have still missed some points let me know and I will write up a walk through on how to do it with a few screen grabs.

Phil - do you know if the Adium status also works with AOL, gmail and Yahoo? Or does it only work with MSN?

Wess - It should work with AIM, Yahoo and Gmail. In Adium you can set their status messages the without the Jabber transport so it should be fine. Using the script in your main status should change it for all your accounts and it should show up for them. It does for my AIM account.

edit: sorry missed a key word out there ha! Should’ve said without jabber rather than with!

[...] to see what others had to say. I posted about it on the TAB forums, and Phil showed me his great blog post which highlights how he uses Twitter as an all encompassing status message for his IM and blog. I [...]

[...] Twitter Status - Via Electric Weekend. I use QS to update my Twitter status. Phil also shows how to post your twitter status into Adium/MSN [...]

Interesting comments..

[...] Twitter (via Twitterific) Twitter has become quite a useful tool for me. I don’t interface much with the website itself but I do use the service through the Twitterific application by IconFactory and QuickSilver, which is why I have included it. I have a few friends from around the internet who use it as well, but it’s main purpose is as my “One status to rule them all“. [...]