Introspection

Simple twitter ruby utility

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:06:12 GMT

There might be something like this already out there but I just wanted a quick and dirty ruby class to get some relevant user information given a twitter username.

Feel free to use it as you see fit - just don’t blame me if you have an issue. You can download from here.


# Copyright (c) 2008 by Jeff Haynie.  All Rights Reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
# are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#
#    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
#      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
#    * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
#      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
#      and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
#
#    * Neither the name of Jeff Haynie nor the names of its
#      contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
#      software without specific prior written permission.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
# ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
# WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
# DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
# ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
# (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
# LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
# ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
# (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
# SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
#

require 'open-uri'
require 'rubygems'
require 'json/pure'

class Twitter

	def Twitter.status(un)
		u = URI.parse "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.json?id=#{un}&count=1"
		j = nil
		begin
			j = JSON.parse(u.read).first
		rescue OpenURI::HTTPError=>e
			case e.to_s
				when /^404/
					raise 'Not Found'
				when /^304/
					raise 'No Info'
			end
		end
		o = {}
		user = j['user']
		fullname = user['name']
		if fullname == un
			o[:firstname]=nil
			o[:lastname]=nil
		else
			o[:firstname],o[:lastname] = Twitter.parse_name(fullname)
		end
		o[:url] = user['url']
		o[:location] = user['location']
		o[:image] = user['profile_image_url']
		o[:bio] = user['description']
		o[:status] = j['text']
		o[:date] = j['created_at']
		o
	end

	private

	def Twitter.parse_name(fullname)
		idx = fullname.index ' '
		if idx
			return fullname[0..idx].strip,fullname[idx..-1].strip
		end
		return '',fullname.strip
	end

end

if __FILE__ == $0
	o = Twitter.status ARGV.first || 'jhaynie'
	puts "Firstname: #{o[:firstname]}, Lastname: #{o[:lastname]}"
	puts "URL: #{o[:url]}"
	puts "Location: #{o[:location]}"
	puts "Status: #{o[:status]}"
	puts "Date: #{o[:date]}"
	puts "Bio: #{o[:bio]}"
end

You can run from command line to test it out:


> ruby twitter.rb ev

Replace twitter.rb with the name of the file you saved the code as and the 2nd argument (ev) with the twitter username.

Firefox Launch Party Atlanta - June 17th, 2008

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:24:31 GMT

Andy Edmonds has organized one of many Firefox 3 launch parties this coming Tuesday, June 17th, 2008. The party will be held at the Park Tavern in Midtown, 500 Tenth Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309.

Andy was the host of the original Mozilla 1.0 Boston Party so this should be an interesting change from back then.

Please spread the word and download Firefox on this day. Mozilla is going to attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records by getting as many people to download FF3 at the same time. This should be interesting.

If you’re not in Atlanta and would like to attend or host your own local launch party, you can get more details at the official Mozilla Launch Party website.

The 2008 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition Fiasco

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:26:57 GMT

OK, first off, a specific disclaimer: TAG and GRA are GREAT organizations and led by some amazing, dedicated people. This isn’t a personal attack on them or any of the companies or judges in this competition.

There has been quite a bit of debate in the past few days about the 2008 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition here in Atlanta. Scott Burkett was spot on in my opinion and was one of the first to publicaly call this insanity out. There were some tweets by some local entrepreneurs and Lance Weatherby attempted to quell the crowd with his peacemaking around trying to turn this into a positive and looking for suggestions about how to improve it.

A little background for those just trying to get up to speed on what’s happened.

The 2008 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition is a cool annual event that is intended to help provide funding and value-added services in-kind to the lucky startup that is launching a business here in Georgia and looking for help. We had quite a number of companies apply, that was widdled down to a much smaller group and then to a final set of four companies. I’m an advisor to one company, Skyblox, which I think is worthy of the top 4 status and one of the cooler startups here in town. I’m biased and I freely admit that. But, that’s not really the point here.

Where this all breaks down is that the winner was a company called ATMDirect. I freely admit I know jack about these guys, except that the hidden secret that’s come out since the win is that they’re not really a startup per se. Maybe to the letter of the law, but certainly not the intention of it. You can technically say they’re just launching the business, but really they’re reinventing a company that has had literally millions and millions invested in it and its IP and taking some smart advantages of a bad bankruptcy situation. (And good for them).

Here’s the stated purpose of the event (from their press release):

The purpose of the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition is to support economic development in Georgia by encouraging and supporting the creation and growth of new companies that will strengthen and expand Georgia’s strategic high tech clusters. To accomplish this, the competition has two specific goals:

to motivate and support entrepreneurs in creating new high tech businesses in Georgia that will support and expand existing strategic clusters, and

to create greater awareness within the investment community that Georgia is a great place to launch and grow high tech businesses.

(SIDE NOTE: I have issues with the purpose, especially the clusters concept, but that’s an opinion for another day).

OK, here’s the rules:

Entrepreneurs interested in launching a new Georgia company within targeted technologies and industries are invited to compete for a $100K cash prize and a suite of related professional services (including priority consideration for ATDC membership) that is valued at more than $200K. The competition offers entrants the opportunity to be mentored by a successful high tech entrepreneur.

Entrants must legally reside in the State of Georgia. All awards will be conditioned on the company launching and/or maintaining its operations in Georgia. If the winning company moves a majority of the business outside Georgia within 3 years, the winning company must repay TAG for the $100K cash prize plus 8% annual interest. TAG will make a final determination as to whether a company “moves a majority of the business outside of Georgia” and will have discretion to negotiate a variety of forms of repayment of the cash prize plus interest.

Entrants can be existing companies under certain circumstances. The competition is aimed at “new” businesses, however the time and effort required to launch a successful business in the targeted areas may require that an entrepreneur form a company and begin certain limited functions before any meaningful business operations occur. These functions could include prototype or Intellectual Property development and for these or similar reasons up to $500K in external funding may be allowed. Market trials may also be required and for this or a similar reason some limited revenue may be allowed. The judging process will take all these factors into consideration when making a recommendation to TAG’s President and the decision made by the TAG President is final.

OK, that’s where it gets a little fun. I think the rules are fair. And, it’s their money and their rules - Tino can do what he wants here.

An interesting comment on Lance’s post from John B. Frank:

ATMDirect was neither founded, NOR funded by Nandon Seth. It was founded nearly a decade ago by an individual named Robert Ziegler who raised a couple million dollars. Nandon Seth acquired ATMDirect for $600k during the Pay By Touch bankruptcy. Thus to state that he “founded” and “funded” ATMDirect is simply a misnomer. Just thought I’d set the record straight. FYI: You can visit www.biometricpayments.blogspot.com or www.pindebit.blogspot.com and do an ATMDirect search to learn more about ATMDirect’s history as well as PIN Debit for the Web…

Even on the ATMDirect website it states:

ATM Direct was purchased by Accullink, LLC of Atlanta, Georgia in March 2008.
See our press release for more details.

(Side note: i can’t find the press release they mention specifically from their website which is terrible).

This is from the about page:

ATM Direct is a privately held alternative payments provider offering a suite of products that enable PIN debit payments over the Internet. The technology underlying our products are backed by a suite of intellectual property that includes 10 patent families. Our technology leverages a revolutionary encryption and authentication framework which is easy to implement and integrates seamlessly with existing payment processing protocols and systems.

OK, a “business launch” for a “new startup” doesn’t have 10 patent families. Ten fully prosecuted patents families would be worth at least a million or more dollars alone most likely.

Also, they seem to have violated clearly the investment criteria of less than $500K (at a minimum, not including their post purchase investment if any).

ATMDirect looks like a pretty awesome company with a stellar management team and looks like they’re very sophisticated entrepreneurs that have taken advantage of a great IP issue. They are creating value it appears and looks like their attempting to monetize something that was on the shelf. I applaud them for this. That’s really not the point to some of the discontent we’re hearing and feeling right now — myself included.

We’re all humans and error prone. I’ll be the first to admit I make lots of mistakes and misjudgments on a daily basis — WE ALL DO.

I think there’s really a silver lining in this whole fiasco and some very positive things can come from this - if it’s handled correctly.

First, I think Tino and the TAG/GRA need to somehow address this issue with the community directly. Engage the community and create some dialog around it.

Second, don’t just assume that me and some of the other talking heads around the community are just loud mouths that are unhappy and can’t be satisfied (that’s true by the way). I think most people understand that it’s quite the contrary. (a) we’re not unhappy and generally are trying to work hard to improve the community overall and putting our own time, money and passion into it through various events, etc. (b) we’re only the vocal ones — there’s plenty of people who won’t/don’t/can’t speak out and are talking around the water cooler. I’ve talked to a number of people who wouldn’t dare speak out that aren’t too thrilled about this.

Third, use this opportunity to maybe refine some of the rules (or at least, the intentions and instructions for judging in the future) going forward. Lance has suggested some good ones.

Fourth, understand and acknowledge that social media and the community-at-large will continue to play a very important role in the evolution of TAG/GRA and that this is an opportunity to embrace it.

Fifth, it might be worth spending time thinking about how to fund more companies instead of less. Maybe in the future we can get $100k to 3-4 companies instead of one. The cost of “launching” a startup is much lower than in previous years. It might be worth it to investigate the merits of doing a scaled model. 1st gets $50k, 2nd gets $30k and 3rd gets $20k. 4th place can have the services.

I think what we want to avoid is the image that these awards are really a waste of time.

P.S. Drop the silly pitch videos which were goofy and a waste of money/time in my opinion. Or at least get someone to really do a better job in the production. I would suggest Grayson Daughters.

MindTouch announces Deki Wiki "Jay Cooke" v8.05

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:30:13 GMT

OK, putting aside the silly release naming convention — this is a pretty big announcement for the really cool open source wiki provider, MindTouch.

MindTouch has continued to gain tons of traction and I hear, from one of our common advisors, that they’re getting a lot of downloads on a daily basis. This is a great thing and today’s announcement is important for several reasons.

They’re announcing some cool new features like:

Polygot support - What’s that? The ability to host all languages on a single site. Now languages can be specified by pages and sections which automatically adapt the UI based on the language. You can also search across all languages and results pages are prioritized based our your default language (as a user).

More community management features - especially for managing larger wiki sites such as IP and user banning, talk pages and advanced page management.

Content transforms - this is the ability to allow content during editing which will automatically be transformed based on the content type of the snippet. For example, you could specify text for syntax highlighting, SVG, LaTex, various graphs, and more… Plus, adding new types of transforms is easy through their extensible API capability.

Open search - this release now supports the open search API

But by far, the most important part of this announcement is the Mozilla endorsement:

MindTouch’s Web Oriented Architecture, feature set, and user experience were reasons cited by Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s Chief Evangelist, for having selecting Deki Wiki after an extensive evaluation of vendors. “I’m looking forward to deploying Deki Wiki for the Mozilla Developer Center; especially with the enhancements that the Jay Cooke release brings,” said Shaver, “Mozilla believes in the power of the web to bring people together in wonderfully collaborative ways and MindTouch Deki Wiki’s extensibility and flexible architecture will allow us bring more of this to our developer community. The opportunity to easily create our own tools and extensions on top of Deki’s extensive API is sure to inspire some great improvements from our community.”

The v8.05 release was driven in part by the requirements of Mozilla, which selected MindTouch for the upcoming re-launch of their Mozilla Developer Community. I think this is a pretty significant endorsement and a huge win for MindTouch and Deki Wiki. Congratulations to Aaron and team for this big win and significant release.

I’m hoping to look to use Deki Wiki for the launch of Techpedia Atlanta this summer.

Startup Dinner Atlanta

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:57:40 GMT

Tonight, I had the chance to hang out with a small group of entrepreneurs here in Atlanta. It was Sanjay Parekh’s Startup Dinner. The idea is to get 8 or people together (no recruiters, no service providers) and hang out over dinner. I believe this started last year by Sanjay and Coty Rosenblath. I attended one of the earlier forms of this awhile back and it was invaluable.

Tonight I got to hang out with a few different people - probably half I already knew and the other half I met tonight. And it was a good mix of crowd.

I think Sanjay is running at least one of these a month - and it’s invite only. You gotta be a cool kid to get on the long list (or so I hear as the rumor) and Sanjay has a rigourous screening program and sophisticated background checking algorithm (most borrowed from code he used when he first built digital envoy) — ok, i’m kidding (sort of) — but if you’d like me to pass along your name to get on the list, drop me a line.

What I like about Sanjay is that he’s not your prototypical local entrepreneur. He’s actually one of those guys that gets it into his head he can help the local community - and he does it. Part of it is he’s between gigs right now and that helps. But, seriously, he’s doing something to give back, to help the local startup scene and putting his own time, money and energy making things happen.

If you don’t know some of his recent endeavors, let me illuminate them for you:

- Startup Riot - Startup Riot is the idea of getting a bunch of entrepreneurs together to do quick pitches to different investors. He’s already got like 80 startups signed up and a gaggle of money guys ready to come. If you haven’t signed up yet, well, you may be out of luck. Go ahead and throw your name in and see if you can get on the list - at least as a standby.

- Atlanta Startup Drinks - OK, this sounds like a lot of fun. I haven’t had a chance to do this yet. Anytime you mix drinking with passionate people trying to do insanely crazy ideas, well, you never know what will happen.

- Open Coffee Atlanta - Coke is my vice so I’m not really into $5 bean juice these days… but if hanging out with people to shoot the crap and share wars stories is your thing, then this is your event. I’m hoping to make one of these once i get off the road soon.

Also, if you’re into shooting high powered pistols and you’re a geek, you might want to check out Geeks with Guns this Saturday at 9am. Michael Mealling is hosting it - tweet him for details. My son has a 9:30 am soccer game so I can’t make it. I’m looking forward to doing Geeks with Skeets next.

A lot of people are asking me about what’s going on with all the travel to Palo Alto and Boston. Well, as you’d expect, we’re entertaining a few different investors as you’d expect and that’s about all I can really say for now. More to come on that very soon hopefully. I appreciate everyone’s interest and I promise that as I can talk more, you’ll be the first to find out. For now, we’re staying completely heads down and focused on building Appcelerator, continuing to grow our fast-growing community and taking care of our awesome customers. Thanks for everyone’s nice comments and offers to help.

ATDC Entrepreneurs Showcase coming May 15th

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:48:51 GMT

The Georgia Tech Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is announcing that on May 15th they’re going to be holding their annual Entrepreneurs Showcase down near Tech Square in Atlanta, GA. I usually attend this event as my previous company was the 100th graduate of ATDC a few years back and I can say that this is a fun time to congratulate the graduating companies and see the incoming companies.

This year’s theme is going to be “Seeds for Success” after the launch of the PeachSeedz blog. I know I had pressed for a while to get them blogging - although I’m sure I was one of many people asking for it. Lance Weatherby has really taking a leadership role down at ATDC and I’m glad to see things continuing to move forward there.

ATDC is saying that the event is expected to attract around 500 entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders from across the Southeast. If I remember, last year was about 1/2 that or so - or at least that small conference room where the main presentation was couldn’t have held 500. This year’s event will be at the Biltmore Hotel, presumably because of the increased size of the event. Way to go guys!

This year, six companies are graduating from ATDC:

• Vendormate, a provider of business-credentialing and compliance-monitoring solutions that help companies better manage the composition and risk of their supplier-base;

• Emcien, a demand-driven product management solution that determines an optimized product mix by recommending the fastest-moving, highest margin product configurations based on customer buying patterns;

• LCGI, a developer of Web applications that allow data collection via the Web, telephony and mobile devices;

• Neurotic Media, the leading media distribution platform and retail store solution for online and mobile content downloads through private-labeled stores;

• Oversight, a business that detects corporate fraud, misuse and errors through continuous monitoring of financial transactions; and

• Terratial Technologies, a company focused on actualizing the potential of the mobile phone experience.

I’m familiar with almost all of these companies - and I particularly think Vendormate has an interesting model. We gave Andy some temporary space at 730 Midtown over at Vocalocity for a bit while he was just getting the company off the ground.

Here’s a cool quote from Andy about ATDC:

“Being part of the ATDC has been an invaluable experience for me and our company,” said Andy Monin, CEO of Vendormate. “Any entrepreneur looking for an advantage in launching their technology startup should take a long look at what ATDC has to offer.”

In addition to ATDC, Georgia Tech also runs VentureLab which helps form startup companies from Georgia Tech intellectual property. VentureLab is run by Stephen Fleming, who is totally awesome and a great person to have on your side.

The following companies will be also graduating from Venture Labs:

• Pramana, which is developing an easy-to-deploy solution to help secure the Internet for meaningful human scale interactions;

• Qualtré, a developer of the next generation of high-performance, low-cost motion sensing technology, primarily for the consumer electronics market;

• Suniva, a company dedicated to the development, manufacture and marketing of high-value, high-efficiency silicon photovoltaic cells for clean, earth-friendly power generation;

• Verco Materials, which creates and manufactures dense, complex-shaped boron carbide for armor and wear applications; and

• Zenda Technologies, a company that delivers a novel, portable, immersive platform for rapid neuropsychological testing, allowing accurate diagnosis of concussion and early Alzheimer’s disease.

Three of them – Pramana, Qualtré and Suniva – have already been accepted as member companies of the ATDC.

It looks like registration for the event is live and the event is free.

Appcelerator + XAware — put a face on your SOA

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:53:00 GMT

Today, at MySQL World 2008 in Santa Clara we’re excited about an announcement between XAware, Inc. and Appcelerator and the XAware Ecosystem.

XAware has been an exciting company to work with and they are really pushing leading in the SOA integration space and are creating a compelling SOA ecosystem of best of breed technology partners and platforms.

According to Marten Mickos, previous CEO of MYSQL and new Senior VP at Sun, said:

“It’s encouraging to see innovative organizations working together to expand the open source SOA ecosystem,” said Marten Mickos, senior vice president, Database Group, Sun Microsystems. “Companies such as XAware, Appcelerator and Active Endpoints provide open source solutions that address a range of business issues, and we urge conference attendees to check out their offerings.”

So what does this all mean?

This means that you can now use the Appcelerator rich Internet Application (RIA) platform together with XAware’s open source SOA solution to give your SOA infrastructure a face. You can now leverage all the existing enterprise data to build rich, powerful and dynamic web applications and seamlessly make them work together using standards, tools and skill sets you’ve already invested in in the enterprise.