I’ve just started work on a new project called Like Debate. It’s going to be a new type of debate web site, launching as soon as I can hammer out the first few features. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter or the Like Debate Blog.
I’ve just released Catfood Earth for Android. It’s my second app created with Xamarin’s excellent toolkit. Being able to develop in C# allowed me to reuse a lot of code from the Windows version of Catfood Earth. The Android version doesn’t include all the same layers (yet) but it’s got the main ones – daytime (twelve different satellite images included, based on NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation but with some special processing to make them look better), nighttime (city lights, shaded to show nighttime and the terminator between day and night) and a clouds layer that is downloaded every three hours.
My main worry had been that this would suck the phone battery dry, but after a fair amount of optimization it doesn’t even register on the battery consumption list. Grab it now from Google Play ($3.99, Android 2.2 or better).
I was a little saddened to read today that Diaspora is transitioning over to some form of community manged slow death. I joined a pod a while back and was pretty impressed with the design. It was very similar to Google+: clean, nice features, nobody home.
I've also joined app.net. The concept here is a social network that you pay for, so the owners are aligned with the interests of the users and developers rather than advertisers and lame brands. I wish app.net well, but it's not the future. Best case (and it's not a bad one) it could be the new WELL - a community that people care enough about to pay for (I was on the WELL in the early 90's, splitting the tab with a friend so our handle was abft, account built for two). If that is the direction it goes in then simply having a slightly longer post limit than Twitter isn't really going to cut it. And cool as it might be most people aren't going to pay for a social network.
Any attempt to displace Facebook has to solve the problem that anyone interested in sharing anything with anyone else is already using Facebook. The only platform that is in any sense comparable is email. So someone needs to make email into a social network.
This could be an interesting startup. Create some account - [email protected] - anything you send directly to that address is a post. Anyone you copy is a mention. Reply to a thread with this email address included and you're replying on the social network as well. Anyone copied on such an email gets invited to the network if they're not already.
You've got a killer viral component and an instant social network that is supported on every platform with no investment needed. Everyone has email, and everyone is a member as soon as they claim their email address or get included in a post.
Maybe someone has tried this already and I just haven't seen it. I'm half tempted to have a crack at it myself.
What would be more interesting would be layering a social protocol over email, and implementing that protocol by proxy on top of email providers that don't or won't support it. This creates a core social service practically out of thin air. Facebook and Twitter are the new AOL and CompuServe. There has to be a way to leverage email into a free and open alternative.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Fight Facebook with Email #code #email #diaspora #google #app.net #twitter #facebook Could Facebook and Twitter be destroyed with a simple email address? )
I've wanted to play with Twilio's voice and SMS service for a while and finally got the chance at an all night hackathon.
Twilio is almost perfect. Very easy to use, well documented and generous with a self service free trial. They give you enough rope to fully build out a client before you need to think about paying them.
I gave up on AT&T's platform after navigating a bazillion forms before discovering they wanted $99 before I could even get a taste.
The one hitch with Twilio is that the voice transcription they offer is appalling. Just absolute gibberish. Unless it's just my accent, or the hackathon whisky. Seems to be a common complaint though and so to take my IVR app further I'd need to bolt in another solution. A pity given how much Twilio gets right.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Twenty-Four Hours with Twilio #code #ivr #twilio Using Twilio's SMS API in a hackathon - I got a full phone version of our product working in 24 hours. )
Here’s how to share a picture to Facebook, Twitter and so forth from MonoDroid:
A fun mix of Java and C#. The directory got me to start with so check to see if the ExternalCacheDir is available and if not fall back to the internal CacheDir. Frustratingly Facebook doesn’t pick up on the text associated with an image regardless of the intent ExtraWhatever specified.
I’ve just released a WebCam app for Android. It’s based on WebCamSaver but allows you to control the webcam – you tap the edges of the screen to pan, pinch to zoom in and out. A fun little time waster.
This is the first app I’ve released using Xamarin’s MonoDroid framework. This integrates nicely into Visual Studio and allows you to program an Android app in C#. This is fantastic for productivity and code reuse and I enjoyed the process a lot more than previous work I’ve done in Java / Eclipse. The main drawback is that the framework adds around 5MB (significant for mobile) and the documentation isn’t always the best, especially when you search for something and find out you’ve been dumped into iOS reference material. Digging around the sample code and cross-referencing the official Android documentation helps a lot. I’m going to take a stab at something a little more ambitious next…
When jarsigner says "Key Associated with [alias] not a private key" it almost certainly meant to say that you got your password wrong.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Not a Private Key #code #monodroid Check that you have the right password when jarsigner says Key Associated with alias not a private key. )
Here’s a quick code snippet that configures SmtpClient to send email using Gmail’s SMTP server:
This can be frustratingly difficult to get right so I’ll run through each setting quickly.
DeliveryMethod: Set to SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network, the alternatives are copying the email to a directory for pickup by a different application. We want to connect directly to Gmail.
UseDefaultCredentials: False, as we’ll be providing our own credentials later. Setting properties in the right order is apparently important for SmtpClient, although the Microsoft documentation doesn’t mention this. Make sure you set UseDefaultCredentials to false before setting the Credentials property.
EnableSsl: True. SSL or TLS is required.
Host: smtp.gmail.com for this example. Note that this server restricts you to sending 2,000 emails per day. There is a less restrictive option for G Suite customers (smtp-relay.gmail.com) and a more restrictive server that can only send messages to Gmail or G Suite addresses (aspmx.l.google.com).
Port: Google says to use 465 for SSL and 587 for TLS. I’ve found that 587 with EnableSSL set to true works fine.
Credentials: Your Gmail address and password in a NetworkCredential. If your account has 2 step (multi factor) authentication then this won’t work. You can generate an app password easily and use this instead of your regular password. It’s also possible to use OAuth.
In the comments below Shika Helmy suggests also setting the Timeout property to 20000.
You can now use smtp.Send() to send the email.
Because it’s likely to be your personal account and there is a 2,000 message cap on sending I’d only recommend using this for small scale projects. You don’t want to get your Gmail account blocked. For higher volume I’d look at using SendGrid or similar.
One last note - while I’ve used SmtpClient for all sorts of trivial email needs over the years the latest Microsoft documentation marks it obsolete and warns:
SmtpClient and its network of types are poorly designed, we strongly recommend you use https://github.com/jstedfast/MailKit and https://github.com/jstedfast/MimeKit instead
Hope this expanded article helps. I still come back here periodically to cut and paste rather than mess up the property order again...
(Published to the Fediverse as: Sending email via GMail in C#/.NET using SmtpClient #code #smtp #email #google How to use the C# SmtpClient to send an email through the Gmail SMTP server (updated for two factor authentication). )
I've developed a bunch of stupid, niche and vaguely promising apps on top of the Twitter API. During that time I've slogged through various painful and rapid shifts like changing IDs, authentication schemes and diktats handed down on which parts of the ecosystem Twitter would like to control. I've had to roll my own OAuth and even re-word a blog post to Twitter Support's satisfaction to get a blocked application unblocked again. It's been a pretty frustrating experience but worth rolling with the punches until the past week.
Twitter suspended Cleat, a tool for posting from the command line. So I emailed to ask why, too much effort for them to explain the rationale at the time they're putting the suspension in place I guess. I got an auto-response asking for information they must have already had and I replied to this. A few days later I still hadn't heard back so I emailed again and the ticket had been automatically closed.
So far just the standard fuck-off-and-die support that you'd expect from a growing company that no longer wants to talk to it's users. But the auto-reply directed me to https://support.twitter.com/forms/ to file a new ticket. None of the options there relate to developers or a suspended application. I tried filing a ticket under 'deactivated account' which seemed the closest.
That form has a hard-coded 'With love,' valediction. Whoever thought that was cute should go through the process of trying to get help a few times.
This attempt auto-responded to say that my account was not suspended, and would I like to fuck-off-and-die or got back to the forms center?
So I tried another form that actually seemed to submit but haven't heard anything back.
I'd be happy to update my software if I know which vague shifting facet of the Twitter terms of use I'd fallen foul of. Or at least I would have been. I'm just so sick of it that I've pulled Cleat and I'm done with any more personal projects that use the Twitter API.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Twitter's API has got too painful for me #code #twitter #cleat #commandline #api Twitter's opaque API policies have led to me no longer developing on the platform. )
I've just released an updated version of Cleat that supports geolocation and timestamps. Cleat is my Windows command line client for Twitter.
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