31
May
I was playing around with the Facebook Graph API using the PHP SDK to upload photos and was having some issues.
I kept getting “CurlException: 26: failed creating formpost data” and was certain my code was solid. Turns out, this indicated a permissions issue with the photo I was trying to upload to Facebook. I checked, and certainly enough, my photo permissions were “No Access” to the picture for users other than myself on Mac OS X. I then set the permissions for “Everyone” to “Read Only” and all is working fine and dandy now.
Here is my working code for uploading a photo from the same directory as the PHP page communicating with Facebook:
$facebook->setFileUploadSupport(true);
$args = array(
'message' => 'I am awesome.',
'image' => '@' . realpath('awesome.jpeg')
);
try {
$data = $facebook->api('/me/photos', 'post', $args);
} catch(FacebookApiException $e) {
echo "ERROR: " . $e;
}
May 31, 2011 in: Technology - No Comments
29
Apr
Recently, TweetChat was hit hard by bots emanating from the Amazon Web Service (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
On their heaviest day, they accounted for 15 GB of traffic. Yeah, that is no fun.
Geographically speaking, these bots were all hitting my service from IP blocks coming from their EU (Ireland) datacenter.
I used this handy chart available on Amazon’s forums to block all future traffic from Amazon’s EU EC2 service. Problem solved, for now…
April 29, 2011 in: Commentary, Technology - No Comments
19
Apr
I was recently looking at some of TweetChat‘s site traffic and saw a few interesting uses of my service from three high-profile sources.
CBS
CBS daytime talk show, The Talk is using TweetChat for a “Tweet Up Tuesday” where viewers discuss a question in real time as the show is live on the air.
New York Times
The New York Times held a #nytmuseums chat to discuss the use of social media in museums and promoted the chat in one of their articles.
Seventeen Magazine
Seventeen Magazine offers you the monthly opportunity to go on a Twitter Date with one of Seventeen’s Hot Guy Panelists using the #17HotGuys hashtag.
It is always cool to see something you created being used for reasons you never could have imagined. Now if I could just come up with a business model…
April 19, 2011 in: Commentary, Technology - No Comments
23
Dec
For the past 24 hours I tested running some ads at the top of every page on TweetChat.
This was an experiment to see if I could raise a little extra money to fund future development without being too annoying to all the awesome people that use the site.
In short, it was a failure.
I found a technology partner to put an ad at the top of the page, hoping it wouldn’t be too obtrusive. The ad even had a button on the far left that allowed people to remove it from the page if they desired (though this was not without its issues).
The content of the ads was a major problem.
@marciamarcia’s tweet was telling:
As a *previously* big fan of @tweetchat, the “overactive bladder – watch & learn” ad I couldn’t get rid of was too much. Gee wiz. #lrnchat
Yuck.
@dawnjmahoney pointed out:
Um ad on TweetChat says “Cleans Your Balls”. Just tht I wd share that w/u (Axe shower gel) #lrnchat
Yikes.
These issues made it quite apparent the experiment was a failure.
The last thing I want to do is make TweetChat less functional, less useful and less fun for users. I would rather it go toes up.
Sorry for the snafu. It was an experiment, it failed.
I will still be looking for ways to help fund future development. There will certainly be failures to come, but I do listen and care about how people use TweetChat. Like anything I make, I want it to be the best it can with the resources I have.
December 23, 2010 in: Commentary, Technology - No Comments
