Tag Archives: web applications

Twitter limits third-party apps access to your DMs

Third-party applications that do not need access to direct messages will no longer have it, Twitter has announced.

There are hundreds of thousands of applications that can allow access to Twitter accounts and from next month many will face limitations.

Apps that access direct messages will ask for permissions again, Twitter has said in its blog, giving users more control.

When you first connect an application to Twitter, we’ll give you more detailed information about what you’re allowing the app to do with your account. These activities may include reading your Tweets, seeing who you follow, updating your profile, posting Tweets on your behalf, or accessing your direct messages. If you’re not comfortable with the level of access an application requests, simply say “No, thanks”.

You can see a summary of the applications you’ve approved and make changes by going to “settings” then clicking on the “applications” tab in your Twitter account.

John Welsh: Seven tips for conference 2.0

John Welsh’s latest tips offer guidance for making the most of web applications while participating in a digital conference. And for number seven, he goes old-school:

“Do some traditional note taking. Most delegates spend every session with their heads over a laptop, interacting with the speakers online. It is very addictive. But you are far less likely to walk out with decent notes or even listen properly. So, just occasionally, close down the laptop, shut off the mobile device, ignore the Twitter feed and open a notebook instead.”

Full post at this link…

Google’s App Engine

Google has launched App Engine – a service allowing web developers to test out their applications on Google’s infrastructure.

By using Google technology developers will be able to see how their applications fare ‘under heavy load and with large amounts of data’, says a post on the new blog for the service.

“The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it’s receiving significant traffic and has millions of users,” writes Paul McDonald, product manager.

There are certain restrictions on the applications, namely: maximum of 500MB of storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day and 10GB bandwidth per day. The tool will remain free when used within these parameters and, as it’s developed, users will be able to purchase extra resources.

Donald says most applications are expected to be able to serve approximately 5 million pageviews per month.

The App Engine is at the ‘preview’ stage – meaning only the first 10,000 subscribers can play with it for now. The list is already full:

Google App subscription page

According to Darren Waters on the BBC’s dot.life blog there were no more places within 24 hours. Waters points to the launch as a signal of where Google is headed as a company:

“There’s no doubt that hosted services, from web applications to programs we associate mainly with desktop computing, are the future… more interesting will be what Google says it will be able to do with the applications and resultant data that it will host on our behalf, on the behalf of developers and companies.

“Google could help drive standards not just for the web as we understand it today, but for each and every device that is being connected to the net now and in the coming years…”

TechCrunch has already used the service to build an application and says it took four hours from sign-up to deployment – its speed and simplicity being the main attraction to developers. However, questions will need to be asked about the scaling process, writes Henry Work.

While making it quick and easy is undoubtedly a positive for developers, Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek urges caution:

“[D]evelopers looking to travel the path of least resistance should pay close attention to the risks of depending on someone else and to the limitations imposed by terms-of-service contracts. We’re talking about outsourcing your infrastructure, after all.”

Is this Google offering developers a helping hand or offering to buy them up?