Tag: aggregator

Twtlens: An Easy Way To Create Your Own Twitter Aggregator

MMM 2 Comments

twtlensTwtlens is a new service that allows you to create your own twitter aggregator (or lens as they call it) around any group or community of users that have something in common (location, work, interests, passions, etc.), as a means to have direct access to the community pulse, and tap into what’s on their minds at any given moment.

twtlens is built on the same platform powering UAE Tweets, that was previously reviewed here, enabling you to create similar views of Twitter for your own groups and communities; customizing it with your own logo, color scheme and background image.

To create a lens of your own all you’ll have to do is have a twitter account that follows everyone within the community you want to aggregate tweets from, and then go through the quick sign up process on twtlens.

Each created lens will then aggregate all tweets from the community in one interface, make those tweets searchable, extract trending topics (words and #hashtags) from the tweets, extract the most popular shared links by the community, and list the new links that are being shared by them.
Search results and trends can be made available through RSS feeds too.

twtlens

Twtlens which was developed by Dubai-based CloudAppers, is still in Alpha (with limited testing slots open at this moment), and the team are working on adding more features in the form of widgets that twtlens creators can add or remove at will.

This service is currently available for free, but according to CloudAppers, a paid model is in the works and should be unveiled soon.

UAE Tweets, A Twitter Lens On The UAE

MMM 2 Comments

UAE TweetsAmong the Arab countries, the UAE has to be the top country in Twitter usage so far, with more and more users getting on board every day, it becoming a source for instant information and news about what’s going on in the country, and with several events being organized around and through it.

To make it easier to follow tweets coming from users in the UAE, the team at CloudAppers have gone on and released a new site called UAE Tweets, which is a UAE twitter aggregator.

According to their description: UAE tweets is a twitter lens on the UAE, to provide a quick view of the UAE community pulse, and what’s on their minds at any given moment.

For their tweets to be aggregated on UAE Tweets, all UAE Twitter users have to do is follow the user @UAETweets on Twitter. It currently displays that it is following 391 UAE Twitter users and indexing their tweets.

An important feature is that the top 10 trending topics being discussed by Twitter users in the UAE are listed, and by clicking on any of them lead to the search results showing what is being said about these topics by UAE users. The service’s built in search engine also enables searching for other terms and topics being mentioned by UAE users.

UAE Tweets

Other than the users’ tweets, UAE Tweets also provides sections with the latest links being shared by users, as well as the most popular of those links.

The site’s design is really nice and simplistic, following the same design patterns as the Twitter interface, and making it straightforward to use.

UAE Tweets is still a work in progress according to CloudAppers’ founder Baher Al Hakim (@DrBaher).

Twatweet & TN Labs: Following Tunisians On Twitter

MMM 2 Comments

Over the past year, Twitter has taken off in Tunisia, much like everywhere else in the world, with more and more users getting on board every day, and it becoming a source for instant information and news about what’s going on in the country.

To make it easier to follow tweets coming out of Tunisia, two projects have surfaced to aggregate tweets from Tunisian twitter users: Twatweet and TN Labs.

TwatweetTwatweet is based on WordPress and uses FeedWordpress and the Twitter API to aggregate tweets from Tunisian users being followed by the @twatweet user. Users who want to be included in the aggregator can follow @twatweet which will follow them back if they’re Tunisian, and users who don’t want to be included can simply block the @twatweet user.

The service uses a theme that matches Twitter’s design so as to keep the experience quite similar.

Twatweet also includes a search engine that enables users to search among tweets by Tunisian users.

Twatweet was founded by Jazem Halioui (@jazinthecity) and Houeida Anouar (@Houeida), and currently aggregates 217 active users.

TNLabsTN Labs, on the other hand, was developed on a Java/JSP backend using Twitter’s streaming API to aggregate tweets in realtime from Tunisian twitter users, automatically updating the timeline.
Users are added by the founder of the service, and have to contact him to be added or removed.

Some of the other features it has is that a preview of links that are posted in tweets are displayed whenever possible, by hovering on the icon next to the link; and hash tags link to their respective search pages on Twitter (not to TN Labs’ own search).

As for search on TN Labs, although it allows for realtime search, it is on all of Twitter not just on tweets from Tunisian users.

An interesting new addition is the possibility to view discussions, with an icon at the end of a certain tweet, opening up a layer with the original tweet and the different replies that followed around it by different users.

TN Labs has a rougher design as the focus has been more on experimenting with features than the overall design.
TN Labs was founded by Sami Ben Romdhane (@samiTunis), and currently aggregates around 237 active users.

Both services provide links to redirect users to the Twitter interface to retweet or reply to a certain tweet; a list of the active Tunisian users they’re following, allowing people either to hover or click through for more details about each user; as well as RSS feeds for updates from Tunisians users.

Twatweet and TN Labs are both still early stage projects, and I’m guessing we’ll be seeing more development happening on both fronts.

Dwwen Arab Blog Aggregator To Launch API Soon

MMM 4 Comments

DwwenDwwen, the popular Arab blog aggregator, almost shut down recently due to financial and resource burdens. Luckily a flow of supportive messages, and a generous offer by an Arab blogger to help the service out with the necessary server resources changed the aggregator’s destiny and gave it a new lease on life.

Now Dwwen are working on an API that they’ll be releasing very soon, in a move to open up their service and make the information aggregated in it more available and usable to everyone.

We got to play around with the inside beta of the API, and it’s really easy and simple to use. The API currently allows the pulling of articles directly from Dwwen; it provides the possibility to specify the number of articles you want to pull, the language of the pulled posts (Arabic, English or both), and whether you want to get the latest articles or the most popular ones.

A number of applications are also being built around the API, one of them using Adobe AIR, which is proving to be a pretty popular choice for internet applications on the desktop.

# Dwwen