I am most definitely a fan of the societal - networking message serviceTwitter . ( explain Twitter ’s appeal is the subject of another history , one I have n’t compose yet . ) But if you use Twitter , and specially if you employ The Iconfactory ’s Twitterrific for Mac (; free with advertizement , $ 15 without ) you might be interested in discovering some of the program ’s hidden feature .

Before I begin , an aside : There are a lot of Twitter apps for the Mac . I ’ve strain most of them , but I keep coming back to Twitterrific . Its simple port does what I want , when I want . Some of the competitors offer interesting feature , but none of them work well enough to tear me away from Twitterrific . I do have a want - list for Twitterrific that ’s about a mile long — but again , that ’s another story . Despite my recognition of its flaw , Twitterrific ’s the Twitter app that works the best for me .

Anyway , on to the flake - out .

Filtering tweets

During the run - up to the election last twelvemonth , I pay off really tired with go steady people apply Twitter to argue about political relation . Not that I ’m not prosecute in the political cognitive process — I vote in every election . But I incur Twitter , with its 140 - lineament limit , to be the last of nuance , and in my mind any political conversation deserving listening to involves shade . So I decide to nuke every undivided Tweet in my timeline that advert the candidates .

The good tidings is , I did n’t have to relinquish from Twitter to do this . I just used Twitterrific ’s little - have it off text filter feature article , which is accessible only via the command - line ( or via a handy secret - preference utility such asSecrets ) . This feature of speech uses the form - play off sentence structure used in the Unix utilitygrep — record more about find things with grep or using grep and HTML if you ’re funny , or purchase Jeffrey E.F. Friedl ’s excellent bookMastering Regular Expressionsto become a rightful grep maven . But the sound news is , you do n’t have to be a regular verbalism virtuoso to craft a basic Twitter text filter .

Here ’s the command I drink down into the Terminal last year :

The first dowry of that command tells you that you ’re set Twitterrific ’s secrettweetTextFilterpreference . The last , quote part is the actual filter . And here ’s your big piece of grep cognition : you use the pipe character ( | ) to mean “ or . ” So in this case , McCain|Obamameans , rid of any tweet with the wordMcCainor the wordObamain it .

Similarly , if there ’s someone who air you message on Twitter that you ’d rather not see , but whom you do n’t wish to block , you could dribble those messages out via thetweetScreenNameFiltersetting , all with the same format .

There are plenty of other concealed preferences for Twitterrific , all completely documented in the programme ’s accompanying Read Me file cabinet . You register it all the way to the bottom , did n’t you ? Nope — didn’t think so . But let me tell you , you have n’t lived until you ’ve turned onsonicTwooshTechnology .

Scripting your tweets

Want to annoy people with Tweets transmit out automatically via an AppleScript ? you could do it ! After all , I have . I wrote a script that allowed me to boast to people in cold - weather clime ( or , in the summer , raging - weather condition climes ) about the terrific weather we have here in the San Francisco area . Here ’s the introductory translation of the script :

gravely — that ’s it . Of naturally , my playscript queries my home atmospheric condition station for the current temperature , convert the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius , rounds both temperatures to the nearest degree , and then sticks the intact thing into oneridiculous weather boast .

Use it judiciously . People hate automatize tweeting . Mine ’s put in as a script I can double - cluck to run whenever I feel the need to lord it over people with houses much , much large than mine because they inhabit in billet where it snows . Ha , ha ! You ’re in your gigantic sign of the zodiac watching the snow fall while I ’m in my petite … hmm . Why am I boasting again ?

It ’s awesome I still have any Twitter followers at all .

Scripting received tweets

you’re able to also publish an AppleScript script that will process incoming Tweets and do things with them . ( There ’s a sampling playscript admit in the Twitterrific archive you download with the app . You opened it , correct ? Nope — didn’t opine so . )

The other 24-hour interval , Bob LeVituspointed out that he was followingThe utter Mooseon Twitter . For those of you who are n’t old and decrepit like Bob and I , theTalking Moosewas a program for the Mac back in the old days . The Talking Moose was a fiber who would randomly pop up on your Mac and , using the Mac ’s text edition - to - speech engineering science , say something risible or crazy . Now someone has ported the Talking Moose to Twitter , bless ‘ em .

So I was struck with the melodic theme — what if I could get the Talking Moose Twitter stream to speak out loudly , in the style of the old Talking Moose ? What a useless musical theme . But hey , I reckon , if I succeed I ’ll get a blog post on Macworld.com out of it . And here we are .

So here ’s my script :

That ’s it . Of course , you could pile on other doings based on other Twitter Screen Names . I tag on on an superfluous Seth of blood line to speak break news from breaking - news account that I keep an eye on . You could even get it to declare whenthis guy’sgot clean clothes in hiswashing machine . It ’s up to you .

I saved my book , talkingmoose.scpt , in my home folder . Then , in lodge to tell Twitterrific to execute the affair , it ’s time for another trip to the Terminal , to execute this dictation :

That ’s it . Quit Twitterrific and re - plunge it , and your script will execute every clip new tweets arrive . If one from the Talking Moose make it — assuming , of course , you ’re dumb enough to follow TalkingMoose — it will be spoken to you in Macintalk Fred , for my money the right old - schooling Mac vocalization for the musings of the Talking Moose . ( If you ’d prefer your messages sound like the autopilot in the Pixar film WALL - E , employ Ralph instead of Fred . )

Please note that there ’s a bug in earlier versions of Twitterrific that will cause every tweet to be spoken every metre a new tweet loads ! Be sure to download version 3.2 of Twitterrific before run this hand .

And if you do download Twitterrific , be sure to interpret that Read Me register all the way to the bottom . You never know what you might rule .