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 specific gadgets:
Enjoy.
I made a blog post over on http://robert.arlesnet.com, and Evan of Identi.ca pointed out to me that I did not link to the new beta version of BeTwittered. This beta version connects to Identi.ca rather than Twitter.com. I’ve checked the google directory this morning, and they have still not published it yet, so it’s still not searchable.
The instructions below are no longer needed! Please see the update below.
For anyone wishing to add the Beta version BeTwittered-Identi.ca gadget now, here are some instructions:
1) click “Add Stuff” on your iGoogle page.
2) click “Add feed or gadget” on the bottom left.
3) paste in the gadget address -> http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/106092714974714025177/IdenticaGadget.xml
Please be patient, as a couple of the gadget features are not working yet. Identi.ca is still working to expand their feature set, and I’ve not removed some things, like the favorites and direct message tabs. They (for now) give a false error message. Identi.ca is NOT causing an error, BeTwittered-Identi.ca IS asking Identi.ca for stuff that doesn’t exist!
Thanks!
Robert
UPDATE: BETA VERSION is now available on iGoogle at this link. The screenshot is still for a twitter gadget, and there are two useless tabs (favorites and directs) that I’ve just not taken out, but the gadget is working.
How did I forget to post about this? I’m a bit of a flaky geek sometimes. BeTwittered features now include tabs for viewing replies, your favorites, and direct messages to you. Admittedly, the tabs are rudimentary right now, but they work. Sometimes I chose to release features and do the “prettying up” incrementally. I favor getting features out over application beauty. There are still a couple of possible additions coming sometime soon…
It’s been a long time coming, and I’ve gotten plenty of email requesting the new features that have finally made their way into BeTwittered. Most notable are the reply and direct message functions. The interface also got a bit of an upgrade with nice icons/buttons, and now by clicking the “Show More” button on a tweet, you can get extended info about the sender and the tweet. The “show more” button, by the way, is how you also get to the reply and direct message buttons.
Next on my plate? I’m looking to add a “replies” tab so you can see who has sent you a reply. Also, I will be adding a “back” button so you can page through your tweet history. This has to wait until Twitter turns this feature back on. Right now, it’s just not available to us.
First off, I want to apologize for the blank gadgets, slow responses, and general bad week. Sorry! I moved BeTwittered to a faster server just in time for Twitter to start having it’s own bad week of daily outages. I’ve been busy tuning the new server and BeTwittered in my free time hoping to alleviate some of the problems caused by the twitter outages and slowness (blank gadget screens, for example) My apologies for the poor error handling. I’ll be working on that over the next few days. I’ve added a couple new feature requests to my list of “hopefuls” including timezones, resizing, etc. Happy twittering! Robert
Scott (http://twitter.com/nintender) and I are working on the next update of BeTwittered. A couple of the features we’re working on are allowing multiple account logons, and context menus that will include things like “reply” and “direct message” selections. Is there anything that you’ve been wishing BeTwittered could do? Something we could create and help to stop your pain? We have a couple of our own wishes, but let us know what yours are. Leave a comment if you think you have the bestest idea ever, or even just little, teency, itty-bitty wish. We love to hear from you all.
