A TwitterBox Suggestions Page

The one thing that concerns me is that eventually someone will stumble across the TwitterBox who does not immediately grasp the security implications. You are from all appearances a perfectly lovely person with a long history of ethical behavior - but with the intermediary server (which I understand perfectly well after having inspected the APIs is necessary), you’re now in a position to collect Twitter passwords for anyone using the TwitterBox. So perhaps at the very least a cautionary note in the instructions reminding people that they ought not use the same password for multiple services is in order.

And of course at some point the traditional Evil Imitator could pack up a copy of the TwitterBox script, modified to point to their own intermediary server…for which I don’t see a cure other than urging that people use only the original TwitterBox and Accept No Substitutes.

That is all true, and while clearly one’s Twitter password is not the most important thing in the universe, there is a principle at stake. I shall add some data security warnings…

I’m not entirely sure what to do about the idea of someone creating and distributing a poisoned client, though. It being open-source, and with the permissions in SL as they are, without checking the script it is impossible to tell. I think at least I shall put a warning up on my Twitter page saying “check the server address, it should be XYZ, if it isn’t there is something dubious going on”.

A first draft here…

Dear Ordinal,

The first trick I’ve done to my version of twitterbox that I think it shouldn’t be without is an error trapping feature. At the moment when it pings your server and anything goes wrong it sends the response straight to the chat history. As it keeps knocking on that door persistantly it can become quite annoying if repeated every few seconds during a lapse of service. I’ve changed it so it outputs just the error number eg.

TwitterBox v0.2 pavedit 2: Error 500 - (check log for more)

… and stores the actual html gunk after that in a variable.
Should one want to see the full text of the error one can simply press an “error log” button from the menu to see it printed to chat history.

Perhaps inelegant, but certainly polite.

Sincerely, Pavig.

Hi Ordinal,

I wonder if it would be possible to display my latest twits (using your Twitterbox) on a prim in my house in SL? Just like that box you can place on your website?

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Glad you liked my idea. When do you plan to release the next version?

Hi Ordinal,

So my idea was a bit too much for version 0.4? Do still plan to work on it?

Thanks and best regards,
Marcel

That is great. When do you have time to implement it?

…forgot something:

And what does it do exactly? Publish text on a screen or prim?

Sorry to ask, but would anyone near see that floating text or just the person with the Twitterbox.

For my original idea I was thinking about the last few tweets shown on a prim or screen, refreshing upon incoming new tweets. Maybe I am stretching beyond SL possibilities now?

Ok, that’s clear then. When do you plan to release it?

I must be drunk because I cannot seem to open Box v 0.4. Is it really me or is there some kind of security still attached?

ok I was drunk…..found it

I am just curious to know if it is me, the viewer or the new Havok4, but I am getting Stack-Heap Collision and Script run-time error from the Twitterbox every time I cross a sim border. Not to mention that tiny fact that it doesn’t seem to work at all, neither sending nor receiving any tweets.

Are there any others experiencing the same problem?

I managed to get it working again by resetting all scripts.
However, I still have to reset the scripts after every time I log in. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. :)

I’m also getting the Stack Heap error, but I haven’t been able to pin exactly what causes it. Resetting the script gets it working again, but naturally the settings as far as making sounds publicly also get reset.

Maybe in the meantime, have those settings stored externally in a notecard?