How to Create Twitter Bot using OAuth

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Nazieb

Twitter has announced to shut down the Basic Authentication API on August 31st and recommend Twitter application developers to migrate their apps to OAuth Authentication. What about bots? That’s the same. If you have bot created using Basic Authentication, then you should migrate your bot to OAuth. Here’s how, but first..

What is OAuth?

OAuth is a new authentication method that doesn’t use plain username & password to authenticate. OAuth uses a pair of tokens to check your credentials, therefore you don’t need to worry about leaking your password. These tokens are unique per user and per application. For further info about OAuth, check http://oauth.net/

So how? Continue reading →

Firefox: Persona vs Theme

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Nazieb

Recently, Mozilla launches a new feature for their Firefox browser, called as Firefox Persona. It’s an addon that allow you to change the skin of your Firefox with your favorite brands. They’ve made a new site for the Persona Gallery where you can download the Personas made by many designers. One thing in my mind when I know this: “What about the Firefox theme?”.

As you know Firefox has already had the Theme Gallery, which is integrated to the Addon Gallery. What about them after the Persona is launched? In their FAQ page, they said that Persona is a special type of theme that changes the look of your browser without changing the navigation buttons, toolbars, and menus, while Themes change the appearance of Firefox.

Still curious, then I made a test: install Persona and a theme at the same time. And here is my conclusion: Persona is made to re-skin your Firefox, it is only capable to give a new background for toolbar and statusbar, while it can’t make any modification to the style of the buttons, tabs and any color like Themes do. Imagine that installing Persona is like making a tattoo to your body, while installing theme is like getting a plastic surgery on it. And happily, you can combine both!

Here is the screenshot of my Firefox tattoo-ed with WordPress Vintage Persona and altered with Vista-aero theme. Nice, eh?

Firefox Persona

Oh, I just realize that the Personas is much like Google Chrome themes. Hmm..

Very Rock Air Guitar Video

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Nazieb

Sebenernya ini berita basbang. Jadi, Microsoft membikin sebuah event unik untuk mempromosikan produk unggulan terbarunya, Internet Explorer 8. Event tersebut berjudul Rock Air Guitar, di mana setiap peserta yang ikut berpartisipasi diharuskan membuat sebuah video di mana mereka bermain Air Guitar. Apa itu Air Guitar? Ya gitar yang terbuat dari udara, maksudnya gitar-gitaran. Jadi si peserta akan berakting seolah-olah mereka memegang gitar dan bermain dengan gitar imajiner tersebut. Ide yang unik, karena jadinya yang ditantang bukan skill bermain gitar, tetapi kretivitas dan akting dalam berimajinasi

Saya kurang begitu tertarik sebenernya karena ada beberapa faktor:

Saya gak suka (bahkan anti) Internet Explorer. Meski versi terbaru katanya dah bagus, but your grandpa had done a great evil to me
Youtube diblok. Jadi ga bisa liat video-videonya
Saya ga bisa maen gitar. Nasib kaum fanatik pemuja otak kiri

Tapi beberapa hari yang lalu ada seorang teman yang mengirimkan sebuah pesan di Facebook. Pesan tersebut berisi informasi yang mengatakan bahwa dia juga ikut kompetisi Air Guitar tersebut. Tertarik, saya buka link yang disertakan di pesan tersebut. Dan saya pun hanya bisa terkagum melihat video bikinan temen saya itu. Iri juga sebenarnya, sama-sama berangkat dari garis start yang sama, tapi saya malah belum ngapa-ngapain )