By StrangeWork.com: The first ever Indianapolis Tweetup has been scheduled!

The Twitter Meetup will take place on Friday March 14th at the Buffalo Wild Wings on 86th St. If you have not already make sure you visit the Upcoming event page and RSVP to help with a head count.

A Twitter Meetup, or Tweetup, is a local gathering of Twitter users. It gives anyone interested a chance to actually meet their Twitter friends face to face!

I will be attending and hope to see my Indianapolis Twitter friends there!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Here is a simple script I wrote in classic ASP to update your Twitter status via the Twitter API. This script handles basic HTTP authentication to validate your Twitter account and URL Encoding to send over friendly status updates.

Response.Buffer = True
Dim xml
Set xml = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")

twitter_username = "username" ‘change to your twitter username
twitter_password = "password" ‘change to your twitter password

new_status = "visit strangework.com!" ‘change to your new status

xml.Open "POST", "http://" & twitter_username & ":" & twitter_password & "@twitter.com/statuses/update.xml?status=" & server.URLencode(new_status), False
xml.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "content=text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"
xml.Send

Response.Write xml.responseText ‘view Twitter’s response

Set xml = Nothing

Popularity: 44% [?]

I just added a new module to my sidebar to show my Twitter updates (stalker vision ;). The module is from a WordPress plugin called Twitter Tools create by Alex King.

The plugin is very easy to setup and only contains 1 necessary PHP file.

1. Download Twitter Tools Plugin for WordPress

2. Upload the Twitter Tools plugin into your plugins directory via FTP. From your root FTP folder the path would be: \wp-content\plugins\

3. Login to your WordPress blog admin account. The web address is by default: www.domain.com/wp-admin

4. Click on the Plugins tab at the top of your admin page.

5. Twitter Tools will be listed as a plugin, but will not be active. Click the “activate” link to enable Twitter Tools to run.

6. Click the “Configure your settings here” or from the Options tab > Twitter Tool

7. Save your Twitter.com username and password into the module. Your all set!

From the Twitter Tools admin page you can add and remove various options. Here’s a quick example:

Show Tweets/Updates on Sidebar

1. Open your Wordpress theme sidebar file called sidebar.php. From your root FTP folder the file would be located: \wp-content\themes\[YOUR THEME FOLDER]\sidebar.php

2. Add the following code anywhere you would like your Twitter tweets to appear:

<pre lang="php"><?php aktt_sidebar_tweets(); ?></pre>

Your tweets will automatically be displayed on your sidebar for everyone to see! For more features be sure to view the Help Documentation

Alex King created a solid Twitter plugin so be sure to support Alex.

Popularity: 15% [?]

There’s a new Web 2.0 site in town and their name is Pownce.com. What is Pownce you ask? In their own words:

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends

Simple enough right? Well sort of. Pownce is basically Twitter 2.0, allowing you to send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more.

Pownce is the new start-up from internet wiz Kevin Rose and friends. To sign-up you must receive an invite from a current member. This seems to be the new way to launch web 2.0 sites, but I kind of like the invitation system.

I haven’t had a chance to explore Pownce completely, but once I do I will offer a full write-up on my experiences using the new site.

Until then be sure to check out my account:

http://www.pownce.com/williamsba/

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ve been working on developing a new site the last few days. I’ve created the first real-time Twitter Search Engine called TwitterTroll.com. TwitterTroll.com indexes tweets from the public timeline and indexes them for search. This approach makes is much easier to find like minded friends on Twitter!

Twitter is a fairly new concept (launched October 2006) that’s gaining momentum as of late. You can read more about it here and here. Don’t forget to check out my profile as well!

Popularity: 8% [?]