Hasta La Gadget!

Social media is everywhere, and there’s no doubt you’ve heard of—or know—people who piss away their lives on Facebook or Twitter without every actually doing anything worth doing. More »

Ever wonder why the World War II British slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On"
has surfaced some 70 years later to become today’s most ubiquitous meme? Not
only has the Internet been cyberventillating variations on the theme  online for
over a year now, one can find t-shirts and other memorabilia easily
accessible for purchase in the real world.

Last spring an announcement from the platform team at Twitter not-at-all-subtly suggested developers of third party clients should find something else to do, and today a list of changes to its API turns that whisper into a firm nudge. The limit that most directly affects any of the unofficial clients you may be interested in using is that existing apps currently servicing more than 100,000 individual user tokens will be allowed to double their current count, but cannot add any users past that without Twitter’s permission. Going forward, any app that needs more than 100,000 tokens to do things like access the timeline, show DMs or anything else a client app might do will also need Twitter’s permission to operate. Other changes include that any pre-installed client app on something like a phone, computer, or TV will need Twitter’s permission before it ships (sensing a trend here?), or potentially face revocation of its application key. Moving on, the Display Guidelines about the information any app that displays tweets must provide are shifting to Display Requirements, with violators potentially losing that application key. Those Twitter Cards that started rolling out over the last few months are also getting a big push, with plans to include other ways for developers to bring their rich content to Twitter, and embed real-time Twitter content on existing websites.

In a section of the blog post that specifically calls out popular third party clients like Tweetbot and Echofon, it puts them in a zone of Twitter apps that it believes developers “should not build” since they mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter client experience. Other services focused on aggregation like Storify and Favstar.fm are also called out as not having much of a future in Twitter’s view of its universe A-OK, see the update below. It’s pretty clear where we’re headed, as Twitter seeks to monetize a growing and talkative user base, it wants to make sure users are all seeing things in the format it wants them to. With a six month migration period ahead, developers and users may have hard choices to make. Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad has already tweeted that “the sky is not falling…the cap is pretty huge and we aren’t going anywhere”, and we’ll undoubtedly hear from others soon. The rest of the details reside beyond the source link, but let us know first — are you learning to love the official Twitter clients, or are you thinking paying $50 a year for an entirely unproven alternative with no users doesn’t sound so ridiculous after all?

Update: Twitter platform director Ryan Sarver tweets that Favstar.fm and Storify are actually “good examples” of services it would like to see. Also, TweetLanes developer Chris Lacy is apparently encouraged by the change, thanking Twitter for “giving client devs a chance”

Filed under: Internet, Software

Twitter’s API v1.1 rules put user caps on third party clients, exert more control overall originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve been living with social media for long enough that you probably know most of the do’s and don’ts. Don’t post pictures of your debit card, or of your billionaire boss shirtless. But be careful when you use the word “home” too; people are watching. More »

It goes without saying that the world of social media has definitely changed the way we communicate with one another, and social networks such as Facebook as well as micro blogging sites like Twitter have introduced a new way we visit places – especially when we check in to various restaurants, hotels and shopping malls. Our modern day smartphones would be the primary device where we use social media most of the time whenever we are away from a desktop or notebook, while at the office or home itself, we will most probably be uploading photos of our latest soiree with the rest of our mates.

Having said that, have you ever wondered whether the humble shoe could actually jump aboard the social media bandwagon? This is exactly what I am talking about with sportswear giant adidas coming up with the aptly named Adidas Social Media Shoe. Thanks to the help of customizer NASH Money, adidas has managed to inject a healthy dose of technology into a 2012 adidas Barricade tennis sneaker, which transforms a phone into a shoe. Alternatively, those who are on the other end of the spectrum might want to argue, is this a shoe that has been turned into a phone? More details to follow in the extended post.

Fans tweeting athletes, athletes tweeting fans, these look set to be commonplace thanks to this highly modified adidas sneaker. Bear in mind that this will not enter into mass production, as it is a one-off concept sneaker that does lead to the intriguing question – what will the future hold when it comes to social media and sports? Imagine Usain Bolt at the tracks, tweeting his feeling about performing a triple double in Rio when 2016 rolls around, you can be sure that the classic Twitter fail whale might just make an appearance then.

The Adidas Social Media Shoe will merge an Arduino unit, a LCD display, and LED lighting in order to deliver a shoe which, by virtue of its existence, should deserve its very own Twitter account. The external LCD display shows off relevant information to user, while a personalized software will poll the Twitter API’s to share specific data on the shoe screen.

YouTube video

[ Adidas Social Media Shoe copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]