What Twitter Can Learn From App.net's Developer Incentive Program


Twitter makes a lot of money out of me. At least, I assume so. The code I helped write, and the sites I run, are used by millions of Tiwtter's users. I've sent a tonne of traffic their way, and what has Twitter given me? Not even a "thank you." Seriously, no one from Twitter […]

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A UTF-8 Aware substr_replace (for use in App.net)


The PHP logo.

So, I stayed up bashing my head against a brick wall all last night! PHP's string functions aren't (yet) UTF-8 aware. This is a replacement for subtr_replace which should work on UTF-8 Strings: function utf8_substr_replace($original, $replacement, $position, $length) { $startString = mb_substr($original, 0, $position, "UTF-8"); $endString = mb_substr($original, $position + $length, mb_strlen($original), "UTF-8"); $out = […]

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Visualising Conversation Threads In Hyperbolic Space


In 2009, Kosso and I petitioned Twitter to allow us to search for Tweets by their "in reply to" ID. The idea was that developers could created a properly threaded view of conversations. Of course, Twitter being ultra-responsive to developers, did absolutely nothing. Skip three years into the future, and App.net is providing all the […]

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App.net isn't racist - but it does have a privilege problem


The logo for App Dot Net.

tl;dr - Excluding people, even with a "nominal" fee is exclusionary, and that can be a problem. Before reading this post, you may want to understand what I mean by "privilege". You should also understand where you are on The Global Rich List. The heavy-handed schmaltz that is Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom made an excellent point […]

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