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Update Twitter and FriendFeed from the Linux command line

ibm.com — Learn how to use GNU Wget and cURL to send status updates to Twitter and FriendFeed without the use of a Twitter desktop application, and follow feeds from both Twitter and FriendFeed right from the Linux command line. The reason people go for an operating system like Linux is the sum of its parts—its total usefulness.

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 11, 2008

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  • lemur, on 11/11/2008, -1/+10Awesome... way to go, IBM! As a Linux enthusiast, I found myself bookmarking a lot of their pages. These guys know unix, no joke.
  • Jookly, on 11/11/2008, -0/+7Also, for the record, there is no presidential election in 2010.
  • mintblogger, on 11/11/2008, -1/+7Quite interesting, good for linux geeks habitual of working in terminal mode.
  • nikki2300dk, on 11/11/2008, -0/+5Get a date? ;-)
  • Tophillious, on 11/11/2008, -7/+12Or, you could go on Twitter.com, type in a message, and press 'Enter'.
  • smotpoker, on 11/11/2008, -0/+4Isn't *all* porn portable? What exactly do you mean by that?

    For the record though, you can watch video and view images in console with aalib or something, though it is not as efficient and very low-def.
  • divinediva, on 11/11/2008, -2/+6The Twitter + FriendFeed combination is proving to be a very useful information stream.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+4It's useful if X is broken on your machine. It's useful if your Internet access is monitored and you only feel comfortable updating twitter over SSH to your server elsewhere.

    Hmm...I wonder if twitter works under links or w3m.

    Also, if you put that curl command in a shell script, you can just run "./updatetweet My message goes here". If you're a keyboard-minded person like me, it's faster to alt-tab to a terminal and type the aforementioned command than it is to alt-tab to a web browser, load up twitter, and then type your message.
  • ozziek, on 11/11/2008, -1/+5is there anything you can't do from the Linux command line?
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+3and no cheating (sudo apt-get prostitute -s)
  • EngineerX, on 11/11/2008, -1/+4cool, but I wouldn't use it
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+3Well, if Cedega ever supports Crysis, you could...

    Or maybe you can write a shell script to send an RPC command to your Windows box to start Crysis. (disclaimer: I have no idea how Windows RPC works, so I don't know if that's possible)
  • simpleboy, on 11/11/2008, -0/+3A similar concept - I use this http://www.quicktweaks.com/tapt/ to keep track of my 'apt-get' activities to my tweeter account
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -2/+5It can't play Crysis.
  • grampajoe, on 11/11/2008, -0/+2You can't play Crysis YET.
  • DJMattB241, on 11/12/2008, -0/+2I came here to say this.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+2Nice. You do know that you can do that on the command line of anything close to POSIX compliant, including OS X, right?

    This is not a "linux" thing.
  • cards, on 11/11/2008, -0/+2I think the main reason I would do this is mentioned in the article; 'automate tasks like twittering your current system usage or availability (for example, with a message such as "server@servername is currently experiencing heavy load").'

    In other words, make a new twitter account for your servers, then use scripts to update the feed with any important information. I might actually use this for notifications of disk failures, important log messages, etc. Just make the feed private and use your normal twitter account to follow it.
  • adkenc, on 11/11/2008, -0/+2i think maybe they meant keep them as senator/governor.
  • Dunnix, on 11/11/2008, -1/+3ttytter is the best for command line tweeting: http://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/

    its a very simple perl application... and its being actively updated: http://twitter.com/ttytter
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -1/+2But you can start it.
  • Conway, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1Wget and curl work on windows as well. This is not Linux specific.
  • HamNCheese, on 11/11/2008, -1/+2> The reason people go for an operating system like Linux is the sum of its parts—its total usefulness.

    ...but in the case of Twitter, total uselessness.
  • Tanath, on 11/17/2008, -0/+1Method #1: Run command 'date'. Method #2: Use some hacks like in the linked story to communicate with people online & get your date...
  • andrewtheart, on 11/16/2008, -0/+1Also -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_compute ...

    zsh compares favorably with PowerShell. The main difference is that it is free software and platform independent. Those types of things don't matter though, do they?
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -1/+2Because some of us have been doing this stuff for a very long time and are still, to this day, much faster with CLI than with GUI for some applications.
  • andrewtheart, on 11/16/2008, -0/+1Who ever said Bash was the most powerful shell? Bash is just a useful springboard for other technologies. No one is foolish enough to limit thier use to Bash. Bash, zsh, and similar shells in combination with the pelethora of Linux command line utilities are what makes Linux far more useful at the CLI then PowerShell can ever hope to be.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1I've tried watching things in aalib. Not porn, mind you, but TV shows.

    From a distance, a video played with aalib looks like a grainy, (mostly) black-and-white movie. You can't tell it's AA from a distance; I'm sure it would be fine for playing old movies from the 1930s or so, just as long as you keep your distance from the screen. However, don't bother watching anything subtitled in aalib; it's too grainy for the subtitles to be readable.
  • ozziek, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1Dugg down? For Mentioning Microsoft in a Linux post? Don't be so silly
  • Ki77erB, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1I think this is really just to say, "Look what I can do". I agree, I love Linux, but this doesn't seem all that useful, but to each his own.
  • grampajoe, on 11/11/2008, -1/+2Didn't you read the article? Now you can make an account for your computer. That's one friend.

    Your best friend.
  • inactive, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1I was actually referring to OS X there.
  • DefiniteFail, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1Can someone explain why you would want too?

  • toastmonster, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1Linux is the only OS with wget and curl?
  • bruenig, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1What if I am working in tty with no graphical environment?
  • evilgourmet, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1A good way to post messages from within PHP.
  • grampajoe, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1Exactly, Linux geeks like to automate things and bypass unnecessary fluff.

    Also, it'd actually be pretty useful in some cases for a computer to be able to tweet status updates and whatnot automatically.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2008, -6/+7why
  • Sokkratez, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1There was a time when I had been ***** my pants my entire life. It was quick and easy. Then I turned two and started using the potty. Maybe I should have resisted change.

    Hanging on to the command line is holding everybody else back, because it's still the only way to perform many tasks. Linux needs to evolve.
  • wiifm69, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1Or say you wanted to create a script that updated all of your 'status' messages at the same time. This is all possible from the command line.
  • wakingrufus, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1why not just use aptitude?
  • gilbes, on 11/12/2008, -2/+2Something tells me that I will get dugg down for mentioning that this can be accomplished from Power Shell (which is just way too Microsoft). Then the rage will set in when I mention that you wouldn't have the limitations of using sed to 'parse' RSS when you could just to a very simple XPath expression in Power Shell which nativley parses the XML output.

    So the article states: "It is also extremely flexible right out of the box, largely because of its powerful command-line interface (CLI), or shell."

    I would hate to see a Linux advocate admit that Power Shell is in many important ways more powerful than Bash (the de facto CLI for Linux).

    http://linux-magazine.com/issues/2007/78/shell_gam ...

    Oh crap!

    The article is interesting and fun. But its initial premise is BS.
  • aaaantoine, on 11/12/2008, -0/+0Well, yes. But how many Mac users would use this?
  • inactive, on 11/12/2008, -1/+1command line? When will Linux surprass Win 95?
  • greentimes, on 11/11/2008, -2/+1that's some good fun there.
  • sakgarg, on 11/12/2008, -1/+0and....?
  • grampajoe, on 11/11/2008, -1/+0It's entirely possible to get a date from the command line, but highly improbable.
  • Delta009, on 11/11/2008, -2/+1What is this "Twitter" thing everybody's talking about?
    *Goes to twitter.com, subscribes, and realizes none of his friends has an account*.
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