Software Shout-out: Twitteriffic

I was dragged into the social networking, user generated content, interactive world of “Web 2.0” kicking and screaming. For years now I have kept an online presence in the form of a website. Gradually I’ve begun to realise that most of my life is spent within a stone’s throw of the wired world, and so it was about time I embraced that part of my existence.

Rather than delve into the philosophies of microblogging and the implementation that Twitter provides, I shall instead explain how I decided to use it. Firstly, I wanted to find a way of posting and archiving silly little notes. Secondly, I wanted to find a neat way to do something like update my Facebook status which tends to be filled with random thoughts I have in some suitably cryptic or rage-filled expression. Having played with various tools for the Mac, I decided that Twitteriffic would play well with my environment, especially Quicksilver through AppleScript.

Here’s how I tame Twitteriffic with Quicksilver:

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
on process text the_text

tell application "Twitterrific"
post update the_text
return null --otherwise it opens QS again
end tell

end process text
end using terms from

Saved as a script in ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions I use just three key-strokes followed by my message followed by five keystrokes to let the world know how my life is progressing, sandwich filling by sandwich filling.