For apps the iPhone OS will look at the app name that you see under it’s icon. So typing ‘bird’would find the Birdfeed app.

But the OS also looks at the name of the app as it appears in iTunes. Birdfeed’s name in the app store is “Birdfeed – A very nice Twitter client”, which is why Birdfeed shows up when you type ‘twitter’.

When you download an app to your phone the .ipa file includes the actual app binary as well as an iTunesMetadata.plist file. This plist file contains the app’s name as it appears in iTunes.

Tweetie on the other hand doesn’t show up in the screen-shot above even though it is installed on the phone. Tweetie’s name in the app store is “Tweetie 2″ which doesn’t include the word ‘twitter’.

Normally when you visit your list of followers these are the options available to you:

But after you protect your twitter account and mark it private, the options change to include the remove option:

Selecting “Remove” shows this alert and after you click OK, poof that user is no longer following you:

This nifty option is also available from the API, though it is undocumented:

curl -u user:password -d ” http://twitter.com/friendships/destroy/59648642.xml

Here is a patch to John Nunemaker’s Twitter gem that adds this functionality:

module Twitter
  class Base
    def friendship_remove(id)
      perform_post(“/friendships/remove/#{id}.xml”)
    end
  end

And here is a quick Ruby Script that removes all the followers of a user:

#!/usr/bin/ruby -rubygems
require ‘twitter’

module Twitter
  class Base
    def friendship_remove(id)
      perform_post(“/friendships/remove/#{id}.xml”)
    end
  end

auth = Twitter::HTTPAuth.new(‘user’, ‘password’)
twitter = Twitter::Base.new(auth)

twitter.follower_ids.each do |follower_id|
  begin
    twitter.friendship_remove(follower_id)
  rescue => err
    puts “#{err} for follower #{follower_id}”
    next
  end
end

They’ve added new colorful default profile images,  rolled out some design tweaks and now they allow the @ symbol in URLs.

Previously if you tried twitter.com/@boctor or twitter.com/@tweetslounge you’d get an error. But now that link works just fine.

Handy for those times you’re copying and pasting and accidentally keep the  symbol

A welcome change from the brown!

Now it looks like along with their home page redesign they have a set of new images. It appears that the colors are randomly assigned:

A welcome change from the brown!

Tweets Lounge is a directory of local neighborhood businesses using Twitter. It’s like a Yelp directory for Twitter.

We’re initially supporting Seattle and the surrounding area, but we plan on expanding to other cities soon. Check out the site: http://tweetslounge.com and follow us at @TweetsLounge.

Yesterday I launched TweetDeck to get my Twitter fix and was surprised to see TweetDeck stuck with a blank empty screen:

Searching around I discovered that there are two places where TweetDeck stores it’s data:

Preferences Folder

• This contains preferences like your columns, layout, etc.
• To find this folder go to your Home directory -> Library folder -> Preferences folder then find the folder that starts with TweetDeck.
• The actual path on my machine is:
  ~/Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1

Adobe AIR Encrypted Local Store (ELS)

• This contains your login info to Twitter
• To find this folder go to your Home directory -> Library folder -> Application Support folder -> Adobe folder -> AIR folder -> ELS folder then find the folder that starts with TweetDeck
• The actual path on my machine is:
  ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS/TweetDeckFast.F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1

I tried moving/deleting the Preferences folder, but that did nothing. I ended up deleting the Adobe AIR ELS folder and leaving the Preferences folder as is. TweetDeck asked me for my Twitter credentials again, but then everything was back to normal, including all of my preferences.

If you are on Windows you can find these folders here (courtesy Christopher Grant):

• C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.[guid]
• C:\Documents and Settings\[guid]\Application Data\Adobe\AIR\ELS\TweetDeckFast.[guid]