twhirl 0.7.5 released

This update wasn’t planned to get out so early, but a slight modification in Twitter’s API caused twhirl to no longer show avatars and usernames. To solve this issue, I packaged a new release (version 0.7.5) that corrects this.

In addition to this, a brand new service to shorten links is supported: tweetburner. It can do more than just making URLs short, as tracking statistics about how often links are clicked, and much more.

Twitter API modified

Twitter added some cool new features to their API last night, which twhirl will make use of very soon. For example, the tweet replies link to on the website is now available using the API. Also, it should be much easier to find out if you already follow a specific user.

The new data fields added to the server responses caused problems for twhirl, though. One of the new fields interfered with an internally used name in twhirl, and that caused data to not being processed completely. Usernames and avatar images were dropped.

twhirl version 0.7.5 corrects this and uses different names now. It was just bad luck, and I can’t blame Twitter for the problem.

Tweetburner support

There are a lot of URL shortening services out there, and two were already included in previous versions of twhirl. But just about two weeks ago, a new service has launched. The Dutch startup tweetburner provides shortening links like every other such site out there (using the twurl.nl domain), but they add something unique: you can track how often your short URLs are clicked by your followers. To find out more about them, please see their blog.

Server move

I’m sorry if you have run into problems accessing twhirl’s website yesterday. As twhirl has become more and more popular, the website was becoming slow due to the growing load. Therefore, it was moved to another web hosting company, mediatemple, which provides much more powerful resources that can handle many more visitors and downloads. Everything should be up and running smoothly now.

Last but not least

As you might have heard from various sources on the net (and on twitter), twhirl has been acquired by Seesmic. A more detailed blog post about this acquisition will be available soon. You can also see what Loic Le Meur, founder and CEO of Seesmic, says about why they bought twhirl.

Get the latest version of twhirl

If you already used twhirl before, the built-in automatic update check should notify you about the new release and allow you to update easily.

If you are a new user, or automatic update does not work for you, please go to twhirl’s website and use the automatic installer, or manually download AIR and twhirl.

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Published:
04.04.08 / 3pm
Category:
general