The blacklisting of BeTwittered by Twitter was lifted. First and foremost, thanks to everyone who left encouraging messages. I’m still amazed at how many people voiced their support.
Also, I want to share the short story so everyone knows what happened. I will post a follow up for anyone interested. I think there may be some lessons to be shared…
Twitter still appears to be having problems with their API. The API is the interface that programmers use to connect to Twitter. My apologies to everyone being frustrated by the issue. I am looking at possible band-aids, but don’t have high hopes. I think we’ll just be waiting this one out. This appears to have started yesterday, so I imagine the Twitter engineers are working hard on it, if not with a bit of fire on their pants.
UPDATE: It appears that other twitter programs may have been having problems also, but are now working. I’ve still not gotten a response from anyone at Twitter, but am working hard to find out why their servers are not responding. Servers hosted at “The Planet” were blacklisted around the same time this problem started, so I’m currently trying to find out if BeTwittered.com was affected, or if 1and1 hosting was also blacklisted. 1and1.com is the hosting provider for BeTwittered.
In the mean-time, I’m sorry for the lack of service.
UPDATE: (ra-1/10/2009 5:16 PM) I’m working on a non-proxied version of BeTwittered while waiting to find out if Twitter.com has Blacklisted my hosting service. By morning I expect to have BeTwittered back up and running, but temporarily missing some features. Also, there will be issues passing through firewalls as BeTwittered has always done. That is my next big priority.
UPDATE: (ra-1/10/2009 11:29 PM) I’m forced to give in for the night. Authentication without BeTwittered.com has been my enemy for the last few hours. The Good News: Alex Payne of Twitter started working with me today to determine what the cause of the outage is. I’ve provided him with some basic info to start working with. I thank Alex greatly for responding on a weekend, and look forward to the results.
UPDATE: (ra-1/11/2009 11:04 AM) Alex Payne at Twitter is still helping out. I can’t say anything helpful yet, but wanted to post an update so this doesn’t look like a dropped issue. Also, service may appear to occasionally work, so don’t get too excited if you get a good timeline refresh every now and then.
UPDATE (ra-1/11/2009 6:34 PM) It appears that the problem should be sorted out tomorrow (Monday here in California) It turns out BeTwittered was put on a Blacklist, but it was done in error, so should be corrected without issue. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and the support. It amazed me how many people left encouraging messages! 
Now, just to wait a little..bit…longer…. I’ll sleep better tonight, I’m happy to say.
UPDATE (ra-1/13/2009 7:30 AM) Last night I heard back regarding the blacklisting again. BeTwittered is still blacklisted, but I’m still working with them in order to get this resolved. I was asked to install a caching server and for a time line for the install. I’ve responded, so hopefully I’ll have news soon that BeTwittered will be removed from their ban list.
I’m very sorry for this extended outage. I wish it were in my control.
NOTE: If you are using BeTwittered-Canteen on the TWiT Army or BeTwittered-Identica on Identi.ca, you are not affected. BeTwittered itself, and the server, are functioning fine.
Thanks for you patience,
Robert
I’ve released another update and added some more features. I didn’t get everything done that I would have liked, but decided to let everyone benefit from the progress I’d already made.
Some new features:
Known issues:
I’ve already gotten one report, and was able to reproduce it once, of everything “sliding off to the right” If you experience this, I would love to get some feedback including your OS (Mac/Vista/XP/Linux) and browser (Firefox/IE/Safari/Chrome) Also, if you can, a screen-shot would be very helpful. The problem, so far, does not appear very common, so I’d appreciate any feedback I can get. Temp fix? -> In testing a bit, the problem went away for me when I logged out, then back in.
I’m also working on the “refresh indicator” bug. It appears some one of the tools I’m using just can’t always keep straight when all activity has completed. I’ll be going back to the old-fashioned, “do-it-yourself” method I was using before to see if I can clean it up.
After that, back to feature requests. Retweet, breaking of very long words, a “super light” theme of sorts, and some others I’m not thinking of. I need to consolidate my list! 
Stay safe through the new year holiday,
Robert
UPDATE: I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback on the “sliding off to the right” issue. Thanks to everyone who responded here, email and via twitter. I now have plenty of info to start working with now.
ALSO: it does generally appear that logging off, then back on does fix the problem.
Thanks again
Robert
I’m not sure I want to call it version 2, that seems like a big burden to bear; and visually, BeTwittered may not appear much different. There are several new features, though, like:
Oddly, the really big changes are in the coding, and will make it easier to add features and fix bugs. This was a ground up rewrite. I’m selfish that way. I created BeTwittered for myself, and now I’m making changes for myself. No, come Back! I’m KIDDING! Please keep the email, tweets and comments coming. I really love to hear from everyone so I can fix bugs and get new feature ideas. This has been a lot of effort, but a lot of fun, too.
Thanks!
Robert (@metarobert)
There are now Beta versions of BeTwittered that connect to Identica and the TWiT Army Canteen. They are definitely both BETA, and I’ve started on a new client that will support multiple servers, so only one client will be needed. For now, here are the links to the beta’s:
Enjoy.
BeTwittered has gotten a few changes today. Most notable are a larger text area to type in your messages, and the counter to let you know when you’ve talked too much; well, really just a counter so you can tell when you are nearing the 140 character tweet limit. There are also a few behind the scene bug-fixes and changes. I now have a partner in crime, so BeTwittered is now benefiting from his big brain. …and, some new ideas are brewing. I think the next changes will be a bit more substantial…
I’ve just posted a version of BeTwittered that you can use from your phone or other mobile device. To have a look, please go to http://32hours.com/betwittered, or go directly to the BeTwittered information page. I’m surprised at how quickly the mobile version came together.
Of course, the BeTwittered Google homepage gadget is still improving. I’ve done some more clean up so hopefully there are several fewer “bugs” !
You can also add BeTwittered to you Google homepage by clicking this button: 
I’ve added some new error checking to keep from displaying ugly messages when the Twitter servers are not responding correctly, and added a logout button. There are some other changes, some minor cosmetics, and some cleanup that is invisible. Please, check it out! -> Add it to your iGoogle page
Interesting. I made it to the Google gadget listings. I didn’t get a notification message from Google. Maybe it’s been there as soon as I saved the program to their hosting server? No matter – here’s a link to add my gadget to your iGoogle home page!
