Toby Atkin-Wright

For some time I've wanted to post a notification on Twitter whenever I update my LJ. Some other blogging systems have built-in support for Twitter, but with LJ we're stuck with using a third-party tool.

I found a service called twitterfeed.com. After creating an account using my LJ OpenID, it allows one or more RSS or Atom newsfeeds to be specified (LJ feeds are of the form username.livejournal.com/data/atom), and it then posts any updates to Twitter. It seems to work well, and was very easy to set up.

No idea how they make any money from providing the service, though.

For some time I've wanted to post a notification on Twitter whenever I update my LJ. Some other blogging systems have built-in support for Twitter, but with LJ we're stuck with using a third-party tool.

I found a service called twitterfeed.com. After creating an account using my LJ OpenID, it allows one or more RSS or Atom newsfeeds to be specified (LJ feeds are of the form username.livejournal.com/data/atom), and it then posts any updates to Twitter. It seems to work well, and was very easy to set up.

No idea how they make any money from providing the service, though.

A while ago I wrote a little script to show which of your LiveJournal friends exist on Dreamwidth. I’ve reworked it as a web page; you can try it at:

http://lj-friends-on-dw.filmgold.com/

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/149587.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

A while ago I wrote a little script to show which of your LiveJournal friends exist on Dreamwidth. I’ve reworked it as a web page; you can try it at:

http://lj-friends-on-dw.filmgold.com/

I read a lot of RSS/Atom news feeds; many blogs, some news sources, some automated updates. I’ve moved between various solutions in the past, but never found one I’ve been particularly happy with.

In the past I’ve used NetNewsWire on my Mac, then added the feeds as syndicated accounts in LiveJournal, then back to NetNewsWire, then Google Reader online, then NewsFire on my Mac, then back to NetNewsWire (with its syncing to newsgator.com, keeping the same ‘read’ status between the Mac, online, and iPhone).

For a while I had most of my LJ friends added to NetNewsWire too, using the digest authentication so I could read friends-locked posts, but this wasn’t ideal for keeping up with comments.

Now I’ve moved around again, adding most of the blog-style feeds to Dreamwidth; I’ll see how I get on with them here. I find that reading longer articles works better in a web browser, whether on Mac or iPhone. I’ll keep the news-style feeds (like various BBC news feeds, The Register, MediaGuardian) in NetNewsWire; I don’t think feeds that add tens of items a day are a good fit for LiveJournal-style reading.

This entry was originally posted at http://tobyaw.dreamwidth.org/146170.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I read a lot of RSS/Atom news feeds; many blogs, some news sources, some automated updates. I’ve moved between various solutions in the past, but never found one I’ve been particularly happy with.

In the past I’ve used NetNewsWire on my Mac, then added the feeds as syndicated accounts in LiveJournal, then back to NetNewsWire, then Google Reader online, then NewsFire on my Mac, then back to NetNewsWire (with its syncing to newsgator.com, keeping the same ‘read’ status between the Mac, online, and iPhone).

For a while I had most of my LJ friends added to NetNewsWire too, using the digest authentication so I could read friends-locked posts, but this wasn’t ideal for keeping up with comments.

Now I’ve moved around again, adding most of the blog-style feeds to Dreamwidth; I’ll see how I get on with them here. I find that reading longer articles works better in a web browser, whether on Mac or iPhone. I’ll keep the news-style feeds (like various BBC news feeds, The Register, MediaGuardian) in NetNewsWire; I don’t think feeds that add tens of items a day are a good fit for LiveJournal-style reading.

Don’t know whether there is an easier way to do this. This script will read a user’s LJ friends list, and check to see whether DW accounts with the same names exist.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'open-uri'

friends = Array.new

ARGV.each do |lj_user|
  open("http://www.livejournal.com/misc/fdata.bml?user=#{lj_user}").readlines.each do |line|
    friends.push line.slice(2...line.length).strip if line =~ /^<|>/
  end
end

friends.sort.uniq.each do |friend|
  puts friend if open("http://users.dreamwidth.org/#{friend}").read !~ /^<h1>Unknown User/
end

Don’t know whether there is an easier way to do this. This script will read a user’s LJ friends list, and check to see whether DW accounts with the same names exist.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'open-uri'

friends = Array.new

ARGV.each do |lj_user|
  open("http://www.livejournal.com/misc/fdata.bml?user=#{lj_user}").readlines.each do |line|
    friends.push line.slice(2...line.length).strip if line =~ /^<|>/
  end
end

friends.sort.uniq.each do |friend|
  puts friend if open("http://users.dreamwidth.org/#{friend}").read !~ /^<h1>Unknown User/
end