Microblogging with GNU Emacs

Microblogging notably combines the worst of the phone world (the ridiculously short SMS) with the worst of the Internet world (useless noise). Anyway, to stay on the bleeding edge, is sometimes “useful” to have a microblogging account and a client, to avoid killing your browser with the Twitter and Identi.ca crap.

The lesser evil is to use Emacs to keep track of these funny messages going down the tube.

Installation

 mkdir ~/elisp
 cd ~/elisp
 git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/identica-mode.git
 git clone git://github.com/hayamiz/twittering-mode.git

Before continuing, do yourself a favor and apply this patch to identica-mode.

 cd identica-mode
 patch -p1 < identica-ch-m.patch

So you'll get the online help with C-h m in the identica buffer.

Configuration

In your .emacs add the following lines.

; twitter
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/elisp/twittering-mode"))
(require 'twittering-mode)
(setq twittering-use-master-password t)
(add-hook 'twittering-new-tweets-hook (lambda () (ding t) (message
"New twit")))
; identica
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/elisp/identica-mode"))
(require 'identica-mode)
(setq identica-username "yourusername")
(setq identica-password "your_!password_")
(add-hook 'identica-new-dents-hook (lambda () (ding t) (message
"New dent")))

Set the proper username and password for identica. For twitter this is not needed. The first time you'll do M-x twit you'll be asked for the authorization pin. Log in on the web, accept the request, and set a master password on emacs. You'll be asked for it.

I've added a hook for the dents and the tweets: Ding! It's the beep (as requested by ruff).

To see the effect try to evaluate (ding) with C-x C-e on the "scratch" buffer of emacs. If doesn't beep, you have the visual bell enabled, so add this line to .emacs:

 (setq visible-bell nil)

You can start twittering with M-x twit and denting with M-x identica now. To get the help on the keybindings, type C-h m.