Three days ago Google announced it's release of Goo.gl a url shortener which is more reliable and trust worthy (to a user) than other services such as tinyurl.com, tr.im, bit.ly, etc.

Now I think all web publishers should maintain their own url shortener which only they can create urls for and control, for example I bought the domain evold.ca, and use the subdomain r.evold.ca as my url shortener. I primarily use this domain to shorten urls to my other domains, like erikvold.com, but I can and do occasionally use it to create short urls for domains that are not mine. As a user, when I see a blog post that I want to share, I first check if the publisher has published a short url for the page, which any smart web publisher does, but for the other web publishers (the majority atm) I have to create a short url, which I can now use Goo.gl to do.

The problem is that Goo.gl does not allow users to use it to shorten links directly. Currently, the Google URL Shortener is only officially available via the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.

Well, I noticed that this problem was solved yesterday by a Google Chrome extension called goo.gl shortener. Amit Agarwal drew my attention to this extension in a blog post he wrote yesterday, where he pointed out the important javascript parts needed to create goo.gl short urls. So I took this information and opened Goo.gl up with a userscript, a ubiquity command, and a jetpack to help everyone create short urls with Goo.gl, check them out!

I wrote my first entry for the Jetpack 50-line Code Challenge a few weeks ago and I would like to share it with you now. The Jetpack is called Tweet This!, and it is meant to help you quickly tweet about a page you are viewing in Firefox with the document's published short url, if it is defined (otherwise tr.im is used).

Tweet This!

Details

The Tweet This! Jetpack adds a 'Tweet This!' menu item to Firefox's 'Bookmarks' menu and context menu, which when used, will allow the user to Tweet about the page they are on. A user can select some text on the page, or else the page's title will be used for some text in the tweet, and then the Jetpack will first check if the text + long url is less than 140 characters long, and just use the long url if so, but otherwise it will use my Get Short URL service (hosted by Google App Engine) to find the shortest url for the page, which is published by the page, and if one has not been published which is smaller than a length you can change in settings, but is by default 35. If the shortest url found is not shorter than the setting length specified then the tr.im service is used to create a short url for the page.

After the Jetpack has a short url for the page, and some text to tweet about it, it will finally trim the text so that the tweet is equal to 140 chars if necessary, then send the tweet, and notify you with the tweet if it has been sent (also the username that it was sent from is displayed).

Notes

• If you do not see a notification, then an error occurred, and no tweet was sent, so it will be safe to try again, just make sure you wait about a minute before trying again (don't be too hasty). An error would only occur if the Tr.im or Twitter servers return an error.
• The jetpack settings are pretty basic, and while they provide a range type they do not show the range to the user, or the value the user has selected in the range. Hopefully this will be changed in short time, but until then I'll just let you know here the Max URL Length range is from 20 to 100.

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This is a simple Jetpack Twitter notifier, which checks for new mentions or direct messages for your account and notifies you of them.

The Jetpack loops through tweets to notify you about every 7.5 seconds, until it has no more remaining, then waits 5mins and checks for more DMs or mentions from your Twitter account.

Get it at:

• Jetpack Gallery: http://jetpackgallery.mozillalabs.com/jetpacks/115
• Userscripts.org: http://userscripts.org/jetpacks/266
• GitHub: http://github.com/erikvold/twitter-msg-notifier-jetpack

This userscript will add two links to all Twitter profiles which will display all tweets of or by the user displayed.

The Unpleasantry:

Currently to view the retweets of or by a user we have to perform the search manually.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Add Retweets Link To Profiles" UserScript there will be two additional links displayed on each Twitter profile page, one for retweets by the user, and the other for retweets of the user's tweets.

This userscript will add a link to all Twitter profiles you view which will search for all tweets the mentioned/replied to the user.

The Unpleasantry:

Take my account as an example, when I am logged in, my Twitter home page has a "@erikvold" link which will display all of the tweets that are to me or mention me, but when I browse around a user profiles (even my own http://twitter.com/erikvold) there is no "@username" link, and if you want to see that information then you have to perform a search which takes time.

The Alleviation:

Once the "Twitter Add Replies Link To Profiles" UserScript is installed, then the "@username" link will be available for all of the Twitter profile pages.

Today's userscript adds three additional pieces of information to Twitter profiles, which are the user's id, date created, and time zone.

The Unpleasantry:

Currently some of a Twitter user's profile information, namely the user's id, date created, and timezone are all not displayed on their profile pages.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Display Extra Profile Information" UserScript all three of the missing pieces of profile information are displayed.

Notes

• Some users have not selected their time zone, so the time zone information obviously cannot be displayed for them.
• I've added commas to the ID as it is initially displayed so that it is easier to read, but for those that want to copy the number without the commas I have added an onClick event that removes them when the span containing the id is clicked.
• This userscript takes a second to kick in, so that it will leverage a previous userscript I wrote, and avoid making two identical ajax requests.

Today's userscript displays a user's total number of favorites or their profile pages, so that when you are viewing a Twitter user's profile you can see how many tweets they've chosen as favorites.

The Unpleasantry:

The number of tweets that a another Twitter user has made is a total mystery at twitter.com.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Display Favorites Count" UserScript each Twitter user's total number of favorites is displayed by accessing the twitter API.

Currently on all Twitter user profiles have a link to directly message a user, if you can do so, but there is no link to send the user a regular tweet. That is why I wrote this userscript.

The Unpleasantry:

If you are looking at a Twitter user's profile and you want to send the user a message, then you have to manually go to a page where you can send a message, remember how to spell the user's username, then you can finally type the message.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Add Message Link To Profiles" UserScript there will be two links add that, when clicked, will redirect you to a page with a message started with "@username ". The first link is just under the user's name called "Send Message", you can't miss this one. The second is in the "Actions" section of the right navigation, which is harder to see.

Note: In the "Actions" section of the right nav, the direct message link was labeled simply 'message', if it was available/displayed to you at all, but since this is actually a direct message I decided to rename this link to 'direct msg' so that the 'message' link was freed up to be used for this userscript.

This userscript is one that I have wanted myself for awhile now, because I manage a handful of twitter accounts now (@erikvold, @voldsoftware, @bettergwo, and @superbga) and I have made a few mistakes where I thought I was in one account but was really in another and followed someone on the wrong account, or worse posted a tweet from the wrong account. Another reason that got me motivated was that I have not seen another userscript that did everything I wanted, and nor was there one that achieved what embøl was looking for as he describes on the userscripts.org forum.

However, as you will see this userscript is extremely useful to Twitter users with only one account as well.

Screen Shot

The Unpleasantries:

1. It's not easy to tell which account you are logged into on every page.
2. It takes a number of steps to switch accounts. Signing out, focusing on input fields, retyping the same old username and passwords over and over again to log back in.
3. It takes a number of steps to login initially in the first place, again focusing on input fields, retyping the same old username and passwords, yet again.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Account Switcher" UserScript all of the above stated unpleasantries are taken care of gracefully, and here is how it works:

• First of all I have added a username url variable to the http://twitter.com/login which will take the provided username and auto insert it into the username field on the login form, then focuses on the password field (which will kick Firefox's password manager in to action), after which it checks to see if a password was inserted and if so it automatically submits the login form. This means that when I go to http://twitter.com/login?username=erikvold (which I now have bookmarked) I will automatically be logged in; when you go to http://twitter.com/login?username=erikvold you will see "erikvold" in the username input field of the login form and the focus will be on the password input field because you do not have the password for my twitter.com account in your Firefox password manager, and if you use an incorrect password then you will receive an alert from twitter telling you so.

  This is obviously good for all Twitter accounts because it allows you create totally safe auto login bookmarks for the accounts.

• The second benefit is only useful to those Twitter users that manage multiple accounts, because it will help you switch between all of your accounts very simply. First you will notice that a new drop down menu was added in the top navigation to the right of Profile or Login link, depending on if you are logged in or not, this is the profile manager. By default it will display either "NULL" which does nothing, or the username of the account that you are currently logged into. To switch or choose an account to log in to quickly, just use this drop down menu.

  Note: Once you install this userscript it will remember the username of every account which you successfully logged in to. You can also manually add usernames if you want to quickly create a long list, and if desired you can manually remove usernames from the username list, but remember that the username will be automatically added to the list if you log in to the account again.

Today I wrote a simple time saving UserScript for Twitter. Often I find myself wanting to look up person's name on Twitter to see if the specific person I am looking for has an account, but the trouble is it has been a process that has always been a few steps too much for much fast past needs.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process of searching for someone on twitter.com:

1. First, we have to click the link in the top navigation bar to go to the page that has the search form we want. If you think about this, you can break it down even finer, first you likely have to scroll up the page, and if you want to perform the search in a new tab (as I prefer) you have to right click the link and select "Open in new tab"..
2. Now you must wait for the search page to load and once you are on the search page, and you will have to click on the form field, then type your query, then hit enter or click 'search'.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Twitter Find People Search Command" UserScript you have two new and better options to perform a search for a person on Twitter. They are:

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