So, as it turns out, this little app I built for myself is actually useful to other folks.
Over the 3 weeks since it launched, I’ve been keeping an eye on the traffic patterns, reviews, and mentions of Tipr across the intarwebs, but I’ve also been busily adding some new features, which brings me to this post. I knew people with iPhones and other capable mobile browsers were quite happy with Tipr, but folks without a mobile browser or with a sucky one were not, in my opinion, getting as much out of Tipr as I’d like them to. I wanted to correct that.
My first thought was to create an SMS service for Tipr, but there’s no way I can afford to rig up a server capable of receiving and replying to SMS messages and I certainly could not afford to pay the $1000-2000/month for an SMS short code (after all, I’m not making any money on this thing). Then the answer dawned on me: Twitter.
Since Twitter offers an SMS interface (40404 once you register your mobile), I could simply piggy back on their service to offer Tipr via SMS. All I had to do was build a TwitterBot capable of receiving and responding to messages. Lots of folks have built IM bots in the past, but there weren’t that many TwitterBots and there was even less information about building one. Even with the odds stacked against me, however, after about an hour of reading the Twitter API documentation and 6 hours of actual programming, I had built a working PHP-based TwitterBot class.
The whole thing works using Twitter’s direct message functionality and runs several independent services to do things like reciprocate friendships, check the inbox, process responses, and send messages back. Unfortunately, the API was only able to get me so far, so I did have to resort to a little hackery to get some of it to work, but in the end, the Tipr TwitterBot, which sits on top of my generic TwitterBot class is pretty solid and quite responsive — even with the 70 API calls in 60 minutes limitation, most messages receive a response in approximately 45 seconds (depending on your network and whether Twitter is releasing a new feature and takes the service offline for a few minutes).
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results and the early beta testers seem to be liking it as well. Hopefully some of you out there will find it as useful (if not more so) than the web interface. If you’re on Twitter, give it a shot and let me know what you think.
Comments
Mind making said TwitterBot class available? :)
What’s interesting is that we came to the same conclusion with MyMileMarker.com. With Twitter, there’s suddenly this really convenient way to allow for SMS and IM and all the other interfaces to Twitter to suddenly work with you site. While I suspect the twitter folk didn’t plan it that way from the get go, in hindsight, it almost seems brilliant.
You know, I haven’t decided if I want to open source the class just yet. Let’s move this to email and we can talk about it a bit more.
This is a great little program, particularly the bit with palindrome. Not sure how you managed to get it to figure it that way, but it does offer a nice safety device (until someone catches on and imitates what you’ve done to manipulate credit card information). I think programs like these are actually going to be very big soon, as the mobile internet begins to take off. Indeed, I think they may wind up being bigger than all of those sites that are currently being converted into “mobile” versions—Mobile Yahoo, Mobile AOL, Mobile Youtube. If the iPhone commercials are accurate, phones may soon be able to access the internet in its current state without the need for slimmed down versions. If so, the mobile programming wave may collapse or at least subside. However, no matter what happens, mobile users are always going to find these sorts of small practical applications extremely useful—like having a PDA in your phone.
Hopefully we can order soon in Austria also the iPhone.
I like the idea of using twitter’s sms infrastructure for free.
However, after following tipr, I’ve been waiting quite a while for a response to either “d tipr help” or “d tipr 34@20” I tried it on my phone as well as the IM interface to twitter.
Not sure if the delay is due to twitter or the bot, but it’s probably quicker for me to use the calculator on my Treo 650 :)
Hmm… I just checked my email, and the answers to the tipr questions are going there! That might be inconvenient if I have to wait until I get home and check my email to get the tip info ;)
I wonder why tipr output is going to email when my other twitter messages return via SMS. For example, if I issue a “get user” sms, I’ll get an sms response, not an email.
Sorry for filling up your blog comments with tech support stuff, feel free to contact me via email if you want to debug it.
The issue is that your Twitter account is not set up to send direct messages to you via SMS. Check your preferences and then try it again. Also, you will need to make sure you have “Notifications on” for Tipr in Twitter as well. I had turned them off and lost the direct message notifications.
The app has some great potential. More people will catch on. But making the result a palindrome is awesome. I usually make sure the amount is something like 25.01 for the same reason.