I’m thrilled to announce that GTweet Beta 2 (now with 100% more Python) went live this morning.

For those just joining us, I came back from vacation last week to find the PHP version of GTweet in shambles after my (shared) server collapsed under the pressure, so I decided to port it to Python and move it to Google App Engine.

Please note that this is still very much a beta so please keep those comments and bug reports coming. Related: The only other thing I have written in Python was called Hello World, so be gentle.

Known Issues

  1. I’m not sure why, but sometimes submitting the sign-up form fails. Resubmitting the form seems to work, so if at first you don’t succeed…

  2. So far this hasn’t been a problem, but I’m worried about those pesky text-encoding bugs rearing their ugly heads, so everyone keep a lookout!

  3. The link to favorite a tweet from within Google Reader is currently missing, but this should return with the next update.

Unfortunately, all current users must re-make and re-subscribe to their GTweet URLs. Fans should know that I tried two separate approaches to providing backwards compatibility, but I couldn’t get it working without relaxing the security of your account information to an uncomfortable degree.

I had been planning new features for GTweet before the collapse, so it was somewhat frustrating to have to re-write existing features in Python, but it ended up being kind of fun.

Python wasn’t particularly hard to grasp, but it has it’s quirks like any language - a marked lack of curly braces and strict-ish indentation rules made for an interesting Saturday.

GTweet Beta 2 has the same functionality as before with a few differences in implementation:

  1. Your Twitter information is now encrypted and stored in GTweet’s Google App Engine datastore instead of being contained in the URL. This change was in the works since before the Python version was needed because it opens the door for some features coming down the road and now seemed as good a time as any to make the switch.

  2. 200 tweets are now pulled every refresh instead of 20 as suggested by Andrew’s Comment.

  3. The Reply link should now properly thread conversations in Twitter. Most people won’t notice this change, but it’s part of being a good Twitter citizen.

  4. Because it’s now running on Google’s servers, interested folks should check out the link to Google’s privacy policy at the bottom of the updated GTweet privacy policy on gtweet.net.

Thanks for using GTweet and, as always, let me know what you think in the comments!

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