We pondered…

We cogitated…

We think we’ve got something you’ll REALLY like!  Ok, so who likes to buy things they like on Amazon? You? How would you like some free stuff from Amazon? Yes? We thought so!

We bet now you’d like to know how. It’s easy! Become and stay a follower of Amazon Steals between now and the end of January. On January 31st, 2009, we’ll take note of who’s following us.  On February 7th, we’ll take note of who’s still following us, and we’ll randomly pick three winners who will instantly become fashionable, popular people. The prizes are as follows:

• One $10 Amazon Gift Card (US Dollars)
• One $5 Amazon Gift Card (USD) and Half Life 2 via Steam download
• One $5 Amazon Gift Card (USD) and  Half-Life 2: Episode One via Steam download

And the winners will be as follows:

1. First prize gets their choice of any one of the above prizes.
2. Second prize gets their choice of one of the two remaining prizes.
3. Third prize gets the remaining prize.

The Fine Print (dun-dun-DAAAA!)

• Don’t be greedy, one entry per person. If you must have your duplicate accounts following @AmazonSteals, please disclose this via @reply to @AmazonSteals from the non-qualifying accounts. If we suspect dupes, all suspect accounts will be ineligible.
• We’ll be tracking who follows and leaves. If you follow by Jan. 31 and unfollow before Feb 7, you’re disqualified.
• Winners will be chosen solely at our discretion. We won’t play favorites, we just want to ensure people play fair.
• Do not taunt happy fun ball.
• January 31 and February 7 start at midnight U.S. Eastern Standard Time. That’s where we are. If you’re in California, just join 3 hours early, it won’t hurt.
• No purchase is necessary, and our giveaway is void where prohibited by law.
• Winners will be notified via Twitter direct message on how to collect your prize during the week of February 8th. If we do not hear from you within 48 hours, you’re disqualified and the next winner in line takes your place.

However, there’s a way around this that functions as intended.  Twitter recently added a long-requested feature, and now that the web bugs seem to have been worked out it’s helping awesomely.  This feature also is available in the API, and some Twitter applications have been updated to tell Twitter what post you’re replying to.  The feature is a new line: in_reply_to_status_id.  If this isn’t specified in an @reply, the latest tweet id is pulled.  However, if you’re using cURL or another application you can modify, you can reply to a specific tweet id and still have people who don’t see @ replies see it!  AND it shows up in the Replies tab on the website (and thus in your twitter clients that support viewing replies)!

For cURL, you should do it like this (I tried with the status before the in_reply_to_status_id but it didn’t work).  Here’s an example reply to this tweet from @AmazonSteals:

curl -u email:password -d in_reply_to_status_id=1043114166 -d status="This is actually a reply and will show up in the replies page too." http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

This is all obvious and I won’t explain any of it.  However, I have successfully tested it and the tweet shows up in @AmazonSteals replies page and also in another user’s tweetstream that doesn’t follow amazonsteals and has no @ replies as their setting.  This could be a bug, but I like to think of it as a special feature: almost nobody will go to these lengths to post an @reply in their stream that everyone can see.  Perhaps it could be used for trackbacks.  Maybe someone would tweet “I just bought a Fuzion Scooter from Amazon that I saw on @AmazonSteals” and set their in_reply_to_status_id to be 1043114166 so that it functions as a trackback.  That’d be pretty cool.

If this post becomes popular and such, it’d be nice if Twitter added a separate feature allowing someone to indicate a post isn’t a reply so they CAN say “@jX is so cool”.

What Can I Do With Twitter?
Our experts geek out on your toughest questions

To the unconverted, Twitter is just a way to deliver mundane details of your life to many friends at once. The free service(
Twitter.com) is a social-networking site in which you post updates, or “tweets,” to a page where friends who “follow” you can view them. But since it lets users post and receive tweets via text messages, it’s actually a powerful platform for getting things done on the go.

To receive breaking news updates from cnn.com, for example, just follow Twitter user “cnnbrk.” Or send a message (“move car 30”) to user “timer,” and it will text back a reminder in the time you specify. Other functions are available through third-party sites: Enter your favorite RSS feeds on
TwitterFeed.com, and you’ll get a text whenever the feed is updated. Send the mileage, price and gallons to
fuelfrog.com each time you fill up your tank, and it will chart your fuel-efficiency trends. With i-Link home-automation software, it’s even possible to use tweets to turn on lights or open the curtains remotely (get details at
hacknmod.com).

Dive in at
twitter.com to find more useful tricks. Of course, you can still let everyone know that you’re thinking tacos for lunch.

My response (posted via the wonders of bugmenot)

I found out about this post because I follow @fuelfrog. I found out about fuelfrog before I found out about @mymm (my mile marker). Not only does My Mile Marker know how to do subtraction (with fuel frog, you need to know the number of miles you drove since you last filled up, with My Mile Marker, you input your odometer readout), but it also makes multiple graphs, predicts how much you’ll spend in a year, keeps track of oil changes and the affect it has on your mileage, and just plain works better than fuel frog.

So, add mymilemarker.com to your list, it’s a great alternative to fuelfrog. And it can do math.

Also, Twitterfeed is totally different than you describe. You say it’s a way to get texts for RSS feeds (there are actual services that do just that, surprisingly), when in fact it’s a way to take posts from an RSS feed like @cnnbrk (for CNN Breaking News), @firefox_queries (for the latest support requests for Firefox) or @TheDailyWTF (for computer humor) and create a twitter account other people can follow that’s fed by that feed. Most people just use it to have their twitter account updated whenever they create a new blog post.

You even got @timer wrong, you need to first follow timer (it sends direct messages, and you can only receive those from people you follow), and you need to put the number of minutes before the message, not after.

John, I’m not trying to be rude, but it’s like you purposefully got everything as wrong as possible when writing this article. Do a little more research next time.

Sigh.