[Note: Twitter stopped supporting IM connections, including Jabber, long ago so this post is no longer relevant. That said, it looks like Adium 1.4 will include Twitter support.]

Honestly, I had taken a little time off from worrying about my Twitter & Adium integration for a while there, since the Twitter IM service was cat-napping anyway, but I’m back into the full swing of it again. Since my previous post regarding Twitter and Adium working together using the TwitterAdium plug-in still gets so many hits, I figured I had better post an update so that I don’t confuse anybody since the landscape has changed a little bit. Fortunately, everything is a lot sunnier now in TwitterAdium land.

First, TwitterAdium is up to version 1.1 and has fixed many of the timeout issues I had previously experienced. It should now be much friendlier to Twitter’s servers, so that’s a plus for everyone. You can also add twitteradium as a Twitter friend to receive notifications of future updates.

Second, and most importantly, the Twitter API was updated a while ago (I didn’t pay attention as to exactly when) and so you’ll now have to modify your ~/.twitter file (as noted here) for the new format, if you haven’t already:

username: XXXX
email: bla@bla.com
password: secret

So, if you had previously created a ~/.twitter file and it contained a line starting with “userid” then you’ll need to replace it with “username” instead. So, the “username” line now actually refers to your username (so “morgant”, in my case) and no longer your rarely-seen-these-days ID number (which is “39063”, in my case).

Once you update your ~/.twitter file, then Twitter and Adium will be super best friends! Seriously though, this has been working very well for me lately and I’m glad I went this route (as opposed to, say, trying to get my Adium status messages posted to Twitter or not doing it at all).

Once they re-enable the ability to follow your friends with AIM, I’ll be all set. In the meantime I’ve had to switch to one of my Jabber accounts.

42

One added tidbit that I’m not sure how many people understand (noted here), but which I frequently get asked about by my friends, is that the maximum character limit for AIM “available” messages is 42. So, since Twitter allows 140 characters, all your long messages will get cut off. However, AIM does not impose this restriction on “away” messages, so your Twitter message will be displayed in full as your away status and your auto-reply.

Also, I believe that AIM “available” messages are only displayed on the Mac anyway, so only your Mac¹ friends will complain that your available status is cut off.

Update: TwitterAdium is now at version 1.2, as of May 7th, 2007.

¹ It seems that my number of Mac friends is increasing quite a bit faster these days, and I’ve been a Mac user and evangelist for years. They all seem to be happier with the transition and the life than every before, which is a very good thing.