YOURLS – Self-Hosted Link Shortener

There are a number of open source, self-hosted link shortener packages out there, but YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener) is by far the best one I’ve come across. Along with it being extremely simple to install, it is also being actively maintained. The developers are currently working on the next version which will include more advanced statistics reporting.

I was bored one night and so decided to register a domain name, lnks.tv, and set up a private link shortner using YOURLS. Everything went smoothly and it is nice to be in control of the whole link shortening process and especially be able to reserve specific links that would almost certainly already be taken at public sites (for example, I can link to this site in Twitter or elsewhere simply by using http://lnks.tv/brian).

Champions Online Adds In-Game Social Networking Features

Champions OnlineI’ve been playing the open beta of Champions Online and like it a lot. You can definitely tell this game was simultaneously developed for the XBOX 360 as well and it has a more console action feel, but the depth of the character customization is amazing and overall its a very well done superhero game.

One of the interesting things Cryptic has done with the game is embed social networking features directly in the game,

To start using this system, enter /socialmedia. From this screen you can control the operation of the social media tools. Use the settings button to enroll (or un-enroll) from each service. By default, all available activity types for each service are enabled once enrolled. Uncheck any of the boxes to disable that activity type for that service.

The Status activity type is initiated by the command “/social_status Your status here”. The plan is for this to be integrated into the status box in the chat context menu, but for now the command will work.

The Screenshot activity type is initiated by the commands “/social_screenshot <optional title here>” and “/social_screenshot_ui <optional title here>”.

The Blog activity type is initiated ‘/social_blog “Title” “Body”‘.

Currently, Champions Online supports updating Facebook, Twitter, Raptr and LiveJournal. I asked about support for WordPress, but the devs claim that the WordPress APIs require sending usernames and passwords in the clear which Cryptic has a policy against.

Personally, I’d like to see these sorts of features become common in all games.

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Twitter Tools WordPress Plugin

Alex King has released v1.6 of his Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress. The plugin has a pretty thorough featureset for integrating Twitter into your WordPress blog, including,

  • Download and archive your tweets from Twitter.
  • Show your recent tweets in a sidebar widget.
  • Create a blog post from each of your tweets (you can set the category, author, tags, etc.).
  • Create a daily digest from your tweets.
  • Create a weekly digest from your tweets.
  • Create a tweet on Twitter when you post to your blog (optional on a per-post basis).
  • Create tweets on Twitter from your blog sidebar and/or admin interface.
  • Auto-link @replies and provide “in reply to” links.
  • Auto-link hashtags.
  • Ability to exclude @replies from sidebars, blog posts and digests.
  • Supports URL shortening services via standard WordPress filter (read the README).
  • Supports WP Chunk for URL shortening URLs in tweets when they are shown in your blog posts and/or sidebar.

Tweetake.Com

Tweetake does just one thing — it backs up your Twitter account. It can back up your list of friends, favorites, tweets or just tell it to back up everything. You do, however, have to give Tweetake your Twitter name and password.

I stopped using Twitter a long time ago after getting fed up with its constant downtime, so I used Tweetake to make a backup of my tweets, and then deleted my Twitter account.

Turn WordPress Into a Private Twitter Clone with the Prologue Theme

I really like the idea behind Twitter, but everytime I go to use Twitter it is down for one reason or another. I’d also like a little more control over my data and since I’m not interested in broadcasting my Twits to the world, there’s the Prologue Theme for WordPress.

As you can see, Prologue turns WordPress into a Twitter clone. I have a separate WordPress install on my server that is password protected where I update my status, etc. WordPress has a post-by-email option, so typically I just send an e-mail from my Blackberry the secret e-mail address I set up, and then those updates get propagated to my Twitter clone.

It works surprisingly well. The biggest pain is the eye rolling from my wife when she notices I’m updating my status again.