Hotchkiss Consulting

Quick post– I found a lot of answers to this problem but none that really worked for me…

This will output your latest twitter status, converting any URLs or email addresses to clickable links:

function get_status($twitterid) {
$xml = @simplexml_load_file('http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/'.$twitterid.'.xml?count=1');
if($xml->status) {
foreach($xml->status as $status){
$text = $status->text;
$text = html_entity_decode($text);
$text = " ".$text;
$text = eregi_replace('(((f|ht){1}tp://)[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]+)',
'<a href="\\1" target=_blank>\\1</a>', $text);
$text = eregi_replace('(((f|ht){1}tps://)[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]+)',
'<a href="\\1" target=_blank>\\1</a>', $text);
$text = eregi_replace('([[:space:]()[{}])(www.[-a-zA-Z0-9@:%_\+.~#?&//=]+)',
'\\1<a href="http://\\2" target=_blank>\\2</a>', $text);
$text = eregi_replace('([_\.0-9a-z-]+@([0-9a-z][0-9a-z-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,3})',
'<a href="mailto:\\1" target=_blank>\\1</a>', $text);
$text .= "<h4>Posted from $status->source</h4>";
}} else {
return 'Trouble in Twittersville, API not loading, sorry!';
}
return $text;
}


Then, to call it, just use this function:


get_status('YOUR_TWITTER_ID');


with your numerical Twitter ID in the obvious spot. You can find your Twitter ID by looking at the URL for your Twitter RSS feed, which will be:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/YOUR_TWITTER_ID.rss

UPDATE: Scripts are available here: http://hotchkissconsulting.net/177/remember-the-milk-email-scripts/

So, in accordance with my plan to switch client communication from phone to email, I have decided that, instead of a Cell Phone, I will carry a Peek with me.  While it has been a rocky road so far, I trust that the people at Peek have some good updates coming down the pipeline, so I’m going to stick it out for a couple months and see how I like it.

The thing about the Peek is that it’s eMail only.  And I really do mean only.  No calculator, no games, no web browser, and no calendar.  For me, that just won’t do– I am an avid fan of Remember the Milk.  I keep it in my OS X dashboard and on my desktop email screen (I use GFYD, Google For Your Domain).  Having my RTM to go is a must.

Currently, RTM offers a couple email-based options.  You can email in new tasks, you can receive a list of your tasks for the day every morning via email, and you can receive an email reminder before a task is due.  This is a good start, but there are some problems:

1) With the daily schedule emails, you can only see what’s going on that day, you can’t see your entire schedule.  This information is crucial for setting appointments.

2) Reminder emails don’t have the task name in the subject line, meaning you have to open the email to see what you’re supposed to do.

3) You can’t do anything with the tasks– no marking them completed or postponing, you have to do this from the computer.

So, I wrote my own email interface, and will go over it and include my source files so you, too, can build your own (if you’ve got some PHP know-how).  If there’s enough interest, I will build a standalone, hosted solution for everyone of every skill level. (more…)