Hasta La Gadget!

When the new and the old collide, it is always an interesting affair. What you thought was fashionable during your youth is now loathed upon by your own kids, just like how you felt about your parents’ dressing sense back in their day. Well, sometimes retro does make a comeback in different ways, and you cannot get any more retro than this Twittertape Machine. The Twittertape Machine happens to be the brainchild of an avid DIY enthusiast, piecing it together to print out tweets instead of stock prices. It is one machine that prefers the style of the 19th-century ticker tape machine, using said style to print out whatever tweets that have been sent.

British Web developer Adam Vaughan was the one behind the Twittertape Machine, having built it from scratch, and he has described it to be an “astounding device will print a permanent copy of all tweets yet requires no ink or computer.” What kind of wizardry has made the Twittertape Machine possible? Deep within its wooden base lies a thermal printer and a microcontroller, which will be hooked up to a computer via Ethernet, and it will check on Vaughan’s Twitter account for new data every half a minute. Whatever it picks up with each check will then result in the printing of said tweet.

Twittertape Machine Prints Out Tweets original content from Ubergizmo.

The U.S. Open is all set to begin in an explosive manner this coming August 26th, where you will find that as a tennis fan, things have never been better. Sure, I am quite sure that Roger Federer is going to find it extremely difficult and challenging in adding to his impressive list of Majors considering how his steamrolling days are just about behind him for quite some time already, not to mention the rest of the field having caught up and surpassing him in different ways already. Still, I would like to root for him because he’s been an all round nice guy, just like the Good Guy Greg meme. Having said that, it is not going to be about tennis balls and hot dogs, as the US Open will also boast of a giant social media wall which measures an impressive 50 feet in width and 8 feet in height.

This social media wall will be able to depict content pulled from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, where it shows off the tweets, posts and photos in real-time. Fans are able to share their “voice” and be a collective “reporter” by using the official hashtag #usopen. Not only that, this particular wall will show what is trending so that attendees will be able to keep up to date with the latest news and upcoming events – at least the tech savvy ones out there. I do wonder whether this social media wall, should it be effective in its nature, be implemented in other Majors?

US Open To Feature Social Media Wall original content from Ubergizmo.

When Twitter placed user caps on third-party clients last year, IFTTT was one of a few services that decided to halt tweet integration, lest it run up against that cap and have to figure out an alternate solution. According to TechCrunch, however, it seems that the Twitter integration is back after extensive talks between the two companies. IFTTT, if you aren’t aware, is a handy internet service that lets you create custom actions between different apps and services with a set of triggers and actions — an example would be to send a picture to Picasa any time you upload it to Instagram.

So as you might expect, there are now new tweet triggers and actions. Examples of triggers include “New tweet by you” and “New tweet by you with hashtag” while actions could be “Post a tweet” or “Post a tweet with image” among others. Some interesting IFTTT Twitter recipes include the ability to automatically tweet a link once you post it to Facebook, a way to hook up G+ posts to Twitter and even a recipe that’ll bypass Instagram’s turning off Twitter cards. And since IFTTT works well with connected hardware like the Belkin WeMo and the Philips Hue, you could also send a tweet to turn those devices on or off. So if you’re hooked into Twitter and would love some automation in your life, head over to the IFTTT link below to get started on a recipe or just create your own.

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Source: IFTTT, TechCrunch

A hacker known as the “Mauritania Attacker” recently claimed to have leaked a huge cache of Twitter account credentials on a file-sharing service called Zippyshare. Twitter has refuted this claim, saying that no user account details or passwords have been compromised. A spokesperson for the microblogging network said that they have investigated the situation and can confirm “no Twitter accounts were compromised.”

This isn’t exactly the first time that a hacker has attacked Twitter. Earlier this year a lot of high profile Twitter accounts, such as the Associated Press, Thomson Reuters and CBS News, were hijacked. Soon after those incidents Twitter implemented two-step authentication to increase account security. Security researchers believe that Twitter’s systems weren’t hacked by the “Mauritania Attacker.” Instead, it is believed that a third-party app caused a leak of nearly 15,000 account details. The hacker uploaded OAuth tokens online, which he claims can be used to directly log into user accounts. OAuth tokens are actually used to verify apps that connect to Twitter, they’re not enough to grant access to someone’s account. OAuth tokens once issued don’t expire, they have to be manually revoked. Those who would like to take a cautionary step as a result of this token leak can head over to their account settings and revoke rights of all third party apps. Granting them the rights again means that a new OAuth token would be issued, and users can continue to use their favorite third-party apps to access the microblogging network.

Twitter Refutes Hacker’s Claim Of Accessing Account Details And Passwords original content from Ubergizmo.

Vine has grown quickly since Twitter snapped it up, with any user of the microblogging site likely coming across one of the six-second videos on a regular basis. That rate of growth has been perhaps more rapid than realized, with Vine announcing today that it has reached – and exceeded – 40 million users, a […]