Over the last few days I’ve pursued my idea to build a “Twitter spammer detector” of sorts using only client-side technologies. I didn’t feel like setting up server components at all.

What was it supposed to do? It should check the number of followers of everyone on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between those. If the person is following more than 1000 people (can be customised), and has a Following-to-Followers ratio higher than 1:1 (can be customised), you’d be informed (by a handy “Block” link).

Thanks to Pipes, the YUI libraries and the Twitter API returning JSON, I was able to finish the first version of Twitter Twerp Scan in a relatively short period of time.

My Javascript-fu is still a bit weak, but getting better. It’s a nice change to only have one local file to work with (excluding CSS, of course).

Over the weekend, the traffic to that page increased quite a bit, mostly because several people liked the idea enough to link the site.

I’ve set up a Twitter account for service updates etc. — twerpscan. The rest of my tweets will go to Carlo as usual.

So, (almost) everyone is totally crazy for lifestreams these days. In case you managed to get around the whole issue so far: a lifestream is basically a big bucket (i.e. web page) where all the updates and update notifications from your blog, your ADD-induced Twitter posts, your Flickr uploads etc come together in one concise way so it’s easier for others to ignore them. Also, you only have one URL to hand out to hot women in pubs because the stream inadvertedly works as a hub page, too!

Joy.

Anyways, I was talking with Hendrik about the various stream services out there, and I figured it’d be fairly easy to build something server-less using a wee bit of Javascript and Yahoo! Pipes. So I’ve spent around an hour to do just that.

The basic idea is that you make a pipe containing all your feeds, and then access the output using Javascript from your page. Add some styling, and voilá.

It’s a bit rough around the edges, but hey, it’s just a prototype. It’s not life- or game-changing in any way, but I’d like to share anyways.

Update 2007-11-21: It’s mostly broken right now since I am playing around with something. Not to worry.

YUI hosting. Nate on Free Hosting of YUI Files from Yahoo!:

Coinciding with this week’s release of YUI version 2.2.0, the one year anniversary of the YUI open-source release, and as announced at the YUI Party just moments ago, we’re opening up free YUI hosting from the Yahoo! network to all YUI implementers. If you’re using YUI for your own project, we’ll serve the files for you — gzipped, with good cache-control, using our state-of-the-art network, for free. You can count on these files being continuously available because they’re the same files, served by the same source, that we use for most YUI implementations at Yahoo!.

This is big, folks. Smart move, too.

Dell IdeaStorm. Dell.com’s new suggestions site kind of looks familiar. That said, I really like the idea of companies publicly gathering and displaying ideas from their users—when done right, this can be a win-win for everyone, so power to every company implementing one of those. Anyways, the one suggestion that made me grin?

Have Michael Dell try actually buying a PC using Dell.com

Google Apps. Business 2.0 Beta (how’s that for a blog name?) asks Are Google Apps’ Customers For Real?.

Here’s what Procter & Gamble actually says: “P&G will work closely with Google in shaping enterprise characteristics and requirements for these popular tools.” Translation: “One of our sysadmins is going to sign up for an account and send you bitchy emails about missing features.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like their web-based office tools, even though I don’t use them regularly. They’re well done, no doubt about it. But by now I find it somewhat unnerving that every single time Google launches something, it is hailed as the holy grail of the intarwebs.

Warcraft Lore, told by jokers. WOW Insider’s ‘Know Your Lore’ segments are pretty good. Every now and then they pick a person or event from the rich Warcraft history and recap it quickly in a fun way.

Arthas was the son of King Terenas Menethil, ruler of Lordaeron. As a youth, he trained in the art of combat and joined the Silver Hand, a group of paladins. He became known for his exploits in battle. He also briefly dallied with a young mage named Jaina Proudmoore, but it didn’t work out because long-distance things never end well. They decided to remain friends, which is as big a sign of impending doom as one can get.

Swinging big. Yahoo! Pipes is live! Go play around with it. It’s really good stuff with almost limitless possibilities. I didn’t work on it personally, and I’m speaking from an end-user perspective. Jeremy Zawodny, Tim O’Reilly and Ed Ho (one of the Pipes developers) described the product in detail earlier today already, so go read. And play. Have fun! Awesome job, esteemed colleagues.

And now the weather. Quote of the day [via Beryl]:

You know it’s cold out when teenagers actually wear coats.

Chair folding. Interesting video. I see real practical use for a product like this. Not for everyday, of course, but every now and then…

Sociality. I am aware that this is not a valid word, but then again, this is not really a valid page either. Hey, I had to put it somewhere…

getYear(). getYear. No, not that year! is a funny list of bad Javascript getYear() practices. Stuff like that is both awful and funny:

var year=RightNow.getYear(); if (year==106){year="2006";}

Technorati WTF. Technorati launches their WTFsystem. I see the possibility of serious abuse, but we’ll see whether I am too paranoid. Anyways, the short summary:

Know something that’s hot? Explain why! This is your opportunity to write a quick explanation for the buzz around a popular subject. No blog required!

getElementsByClassName() in Firefox 3. Native, built-in! Because John said so.

Get your URLs straight. A good explanation why everyone should be using disambiguated URLs by (of course) Mr. Willison. (Now all I need to do is “fix” my site.)

Presently. Apparently Google is working on a presentation tool. Is anyone really surprised? I ain’t. For the time being, I’ll stick with S5, tho. But I believe Google will be taking a slightly different approach than the creator of S5, i.e. they’ll continue catering to non-geeks.