dodger

Dodger

Dodger is a visual twitter client written with go, phantom.js and reveal.js. It is named after Terry Pratchett's book.

Twitter timelines are a valuable source of information but they contain very large volumes of information. Suppose you follow 500 users. If you devote just half a minute a day to each one then you need 4 hours daily just to read the timeline and this does not include the time to visit the URLs they post. This is too much time. Moreover many tweets are like cool or check it or give it a try which does not give even a small hint of the URL content so you have to visit it. This needs of course additional time. What is the most effective way to handle such a volume of information? Of course using a computer to do the job!

Dodger reads your timeline periodically and extracts the URLs from each tweet. If a tweet does not contain a URL then it is rejected. The best way to follow such realtime conversations is with a browser or another twitter client. Dodger cares only about useful URLs posted in tweets. Dodger first filters out the URLs and renders them in PNG images using phantom.js. Then it creates a reveal.js presentation that combines these images and their tweet text. It is much faster to browse a timeline by seeing the screenshots of the URLs rather than reading tweets and visiting URLs with the browser. Check the demo to get an idea of how dodger works and saves time.

Installation

This version of Dodger is a standalone application. Hopefully the next version will be a web service.

Prerequisites

1. Install go
2. Install reveal.js The simplest way it to download a .zip and unzip it in the dodger directory
3. Install phantom.js Again download a .zip, unzip it and put the executable in PATH

Building dodger

1. git clone https://github.com/anastasop/dodger
2. cd dodger
3. go build

Running dodger

This version is a console application. To run it locally first you must create a twitter application for it. Visit developer.twitter.com, create a single user REST API application and configure the access tokens for it. Then create a file named credentials.json like the following. It must be in the same directory as the dodger executable.

{
	"applicationOAuthToken": "NviYKVgeO",
	"applicationOAuthSecret": "a1qHe2",

	"userOAuthToken": "39051390-rq",
	"userOAuthSecret": "f6jWndV"
}

The runtime flags are

• -h display an overview of the runtime flags
• -i twitter timeline refresh period. Default is 1 hour
• -p http port. Default is 8080
• -r reveal.js installation directory
• -s maximum number of slides displayed. Default is 50
• -e include tweets for which rendering failed. These pages usually have flash or other plugins or are too much javascript

There is the run.sh script for convenience. Run this script and point your browser at localhost:8080. Use the arrow keys to navigate. Left, Right move thought the presentation, Down shows the actual tweet and g opens a browser tab with the URL.

TODO

1. deploy it as a web service
2. refreshing using http-equiv or manual is too old fashioned. Use websockets for a more interactive experience

Bugs

1. it runs phantom.js as a subprocess wrapped with timeout. Implement a timeout mechanism in go so that it can run on on-unix systems.
2. If phantom.js rendering silently then you just see an empty image or a black bar. Somehow check the rendering result and discard it if necessary

Enjoy!!