My First Google Buzz App: Who gives a frak?

Subhead: My impression of Google Buzz/the Google Buzz "API."



As most are probably aware, Google Buzz recently launched, while with much less fanfare than the anti-climactic and rather disappointingly immature, but retaining potential, Google Wave, still plenty of hype, noise and clamor.

OK, Google Buzz itself is decent. Nothing super special, but it has potential. Aggregation can make my life easier in various projects. I'm not wowed by it, but, without having had anything in the way of expectations, I'm not disappointed, either.

Now, on the API side ... WHAT API!? There's really not a whole lot of programming to do against Google Buzz yet. Users can associate various accounts for aggregation from other well-known social media services, and Google Buzz provides some XFN markup for non-standard content or services to enable custom associations:

<link rel="me" type="text/html" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/your.username"/>

As far as I can tell, though I'll grant you my weekend was spent on the output side of Buzz and not so much the input, the only way to get content into Google Buzz right now is by an associated service or feed -- which can include your own RSS or ATOM feed, but you can't directly post an update to Google Buzz via API.

On the consumer side, you can pull a user's Buzz updates as ATOM using:

http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/{33-digit profile ID}/public/posted "ugly URL"

(You are supposed to be able to use your username, i.e. andrew.badera, instead of that 33-digit profile ID but apparently those so-called "friendly URLs" aren't pushing updates as properly or completely to the hub as the ugly URL-based subscriptions.)

You can subscribe to push notifications of a user's feed via pubsubhubbub.appspot.com. I didn't spend a ton of time digging, but in what time I did spend, I didn't find a .NET PubSubHubbub client subscriber or push notification callback handler floating around the internets. I've written a C# subscriber utility and an ASP.NET .ASHX handler for subscription verification and push callback receipt and handling which I'll be posting later today after hosting it somewhere like Google Code.

So far, Google Buzz and its API seem like Just Another Aggregator. Yes, the PubSubHubbub protocol is pretty freakin' cool, and, at least for now, seems highly responsive when it comes to subscription requests and push deliveries. I'm not yet sure however what's going to entice mainstream social network users to make the leap to Buzz. I'm compelled for business purposes, not personal, and social networking apps don't make the leap without personal engagement and enthusiasm.

Update: Custom URL Shortener

This is an update to a previous piece on shortening a URL/encoding an ID.

TSQL CHARINDEX starting at position zero returns an unexpected value of ' '. TSQL updated to do some explicit swaps around position 0, as well as to better randomize the encoding characterset.

ShortenID:

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[ShortenID]
 @idToShorten numeric(18,0),
 @debug bit = 0,
 @shortenedID varchar(20) OUT
AS

BEGIN
 SET @shortenedID = 'NULL ID'

 IF @idToShorten < 1
  RETURN

 DECLARE @i int = 0
 DECLARE @ShortChars varchar(100) = 'TrCn8A2faBpb95ceDYdFhGjK6kmL3NxORPqSUtV7XvyH4zuQMsgJ'
 DECLARE @charBase int = LEN(@ShortChars)
 DECLARE @currentCharacter char
 DECLARE @currPos int

 DECLARE @shortened varchar(20) = ''

 WHILE @idToShorten > 0
 BEGIN
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT CONVERT(varchar(20), @i) + ': @idToShorten: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @idToShorten)
  END
  
  SET @currPos = (@idToShorten % @charBase)
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@currPos: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @currPos)
  END
  
  SET @currentCharacter = SUBSTRING(@ShortChars, @currPos, 1)
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@currentCharacter: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @currentCharacter)
  END
  
  IF @currentCharacter = ' '
  BEGIN
   SET @currentCharacter = 'Z'
  END
  
  SELECT @shortened = @currentCharacter + @shortened
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@shortened: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @shortened)
  END
  
  SET @idToShorten = FLOOR(@idToShorten/@charBase)
  SET @i = @i + 1
 END
 
 SELECT @shortenedID = @shortened
END

ExplodeID

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[ExplodeShortID]
 @shortenedID varchar(20),
 @debug bit = 0,
 @idExploded numeric(18,0) OUT
AS

BEGIN
 SET @idExploded = -1

 IF LTRIM(RTRIM(@shortenedID)) = ''
  RETURN

 DECLARE @ShortChars varchar(100) = 'TrCn8A2faBpb95ceDYdFhGjK6kmL3NxORPqSUtV7XvyH4zuQMsgJ'
 DECLARE @charBase int = LEN(@ShortChars)
 DECLARE @currentCharacter char
 DECLARE @currPos int = 0
 
 DECLARE @exploded numeric (18, 0) = 0

 DECLARE @lenShortenedID int = LEN(@shortenedID)
 DECLARE @i int = @lenShortenedID
 DECLARE @pow int = 0;
 DECLARE @currPosSource int = 0

 WHILE (@i > 0)
 BEGIN
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@i: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @i)
  END
  
  SET @currPosSource = (-1 * ( @i - LEN(@shortenedID) ))
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@currPosSource: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @currPosSource)
  END
  
  SET @currentCharacter = SUBSTRING( @shortenedID, @currPosSource + 1, 1 )
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@currentCharacter: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @currentCharacter)
  END
  
  IF @currentCharacter = 'Z'
  BEGIN
   SET @currentCharacter = ' '
  END
  
  SET @currPos = CHARINDEX(@currentCharacter, @ShortChars COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS)
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@currPos: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @currPos)
  END
  
  SET @pow = POWER(@charBase, @i-1)
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@pow: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @pow)
  END
  
  SET @exploded = @exploded + (@currPos * @pow)
  IF @debug = 1 
  BEGIN
   PRINT '@exploded: ' + CONVERT(varchar(20), @exploded)
  END
  
  SET @i = @i - 1
 END 
 
 SET @idExploded = @exploded
END

Study: Ages of social network users

Interesting, and to me at least, a little bit surprising.

Study: Ages of social network users | Royal Pingdom

Twitter engineering blog, Twitter Text library in C#

Dewald Pretorius came across and shared on the Twitter dev-talk list the recently created Twitter engineering blog. Interesting engineering stuff to be read there, and not necessarily Twitter-specific by any means.

One of the entries mentions Twitter Text libraries for Ruby and Java. These libraries allow external consumers to, in theory, parse tweet text for URLs, screenname mentions and hashtags the same way Twitter does.

I grabbed Matt Sanford's twitter-text-java and created a quick C# port, NTwitterText. It looks like one or two of the URL regex patterns need some tweaking, but otherwise all functionality ported over pretty easily and cleanly.

Would like to share

Would like to share the StorageByMail website which we revamped over the past couple months, and relaunched on Rackspace Cloud servers for the client last weekend. StorageByMail is an NYC-based startup that enables customers to conveniently ship items into and out of storage.

The original site was in classic ASP, using all dynamic SQL. The new, more secure site is in ASP.NET with bound parameters, uses updated cryptography and the MembershipProvider and RoleProvider to replace a legacy homegrown user repository. Various new functionality has been added, as well as Telerik GUI controls for improved usability and user experience. AJAX abounds.

Dan @ SBM, we enjoyed working with you, and certainly hope to do so again.