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RMU Session #1, Exercise #1
-- RMU SESSION #1 | PROBLEM 1 -- Submissions due 20:00 UTC 2010.09.07
If in doubt about how to submit, see SUBMISSION_GUIDELINES file.
For exercise #1, you'll be doing a bit of web service integration. Your goal will be to create some interesting mashup by connecting any web service of your choosing to twitter, either by creating an automated feed from an external data source, or a bot which responds in an interesting way to certain kinds of tweets.
This exercise is pretty open ended, but please follow the guidelines listed below.
== GUIDELINES
You can use any Ruby based Twitter libraries you'd like.
You must integrate with some external application, preferably one that you haven't interacted with programatically before.
Any service that we all can access via HTTP without paying for it is fair game. Even if you want to do something like use Mechanize to scrape a site that has no defined service API, that'd be acceptable.
You should create a new twitter account for testing your bot, and have it running live to demonstrate it on 9/8.
You should use the mailing list to communicate what sorts of bots you are building. Ideally, no two bots will provide the same featureset.
You may look at other bots for inspiration, but do not submit a solution that simply mirrors something else you found. Be creative :)
You may help each other with the technical aspect of this project, so feel free to discuss integrating with twitter on #rmu-session-1 or on the mailing list. You can also ask folks for help with how to integrate with whatever other services you want to use. While your actual submission needs to be your own work, do not be afraid to ask for help from your fellow students.
Examples:
A bot which tweets all posts to Hacker News: http://twitter.com/hackernewsbot
A list of useful twitter bots (i have not tested these, but you can get the idea from here): http://www.techmalaya.com/2007/12/13/10-most-useful-twitter-bots-list/
== QUESTIONS?
Hit up the mailing list or IRC.
Please note that I am traveling for the next 7 days, and will only have access to email 9/1, 9/2, and 9/7. I will try to answer questions during that time, but please rely on your fellow students for help in between.