Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [52]
You can also set up your Twitter account so that direct messages are sent to your e-mail inbox:
1. On your Home page, click Settings at the top of the screen.
The Settings screen appears.
2. Select the Notices tab.
3. Next to Direct Text Emails, check the Email When I Receive a New Direct Message check box.
Even if you’re receiving direct notifications through Twitter and your mobile phone, you may also want to get them by e-mail. Most modern e-mail applications, including Webmail software, allow you to search through your mail. By always having a copy in your e-mail inbox, you can much more easily retrieve and find a direct message that you receive. Otherwise there is no way to search your direct messages, which can be a problem.
Although Twitter can send you e-mails, it has no mechanism that allows you to send updates, replies, or direct messages directly via e-mail. (But they do provide a link in the e-mail that you can click to open pages at Twitter.com [or mobile Twitter] where you can send Twitter info.)
To work around this limitation, some developers have used the API to come up with e-mail clients for Twitter. Two of our favorites include Topify (www.topify.com), shown in Figure 8-1, and Twittermail (www.twittermail.com), shown in Figure 8-2. Both of these Web applications enable you to interact with users and update Twitter directly from your e-mail address.
As with many third-party Web applications, Topify and Twittermail ask for your Twitter username and password. If you don’t think you can trust a site with your credentials, just don’t use it! Luckily, OAuth holds the promise of letting you give third-party applications limited permission to function with your account without giving away your password and the ability to access everything about your account.
Figure 8-1: Topify offers enhanced Twitter notifications and e-mail-based replies.
Figure 8-2: Twittermail looks like Twitter, but integrates Twitter with your e-mail inbox.
Swimming Your Twitter Stream with RSS Feeds
If you want to keep tabs on your Twitter network without logging into Twitter.com, you can use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to pull in your Twitter stream like it’s a blog. Really Simple Syndication is a format for delivering dynamic Web content — blogs, news stories, and multimedia — in a standard, easy-to-read format (called feeds). RSS isn’t a Web site or a Web page: It’s a raw data feed for the content on a Web page or Web site. You often find RSS on blogs and news sites, but any site that has live and updating content, including Twitter, can use RSS.
Most modern browsers (such as Safari, Firefox, and later versions of Internet Explorer) have RSS reading capabilities built in, but you likely want to use a dedicated application or Web site to handle your feeds because then you can go back later and search them, refer to them, catch up on many at once, and more.
An RSS reader, such as Newsgator (www.newsgator.com) or Google Reader (www.google.com/reader), aggregates RSS feeds, which you can then read. Within these applications, you subscribe to an RSS feed, which allows you to access your favorite Web content within a single destination and keep up with frequently updated sites.
RSS is a fundamental part of Twitter because it allows users to share and access timelines from virtually anywhere on the Web, as well as through desktop applications and mobile devices. Each user’s timeline has its own RSS feed, which you can read via an RSS reader.
By the way, the gentleman credited with inventing RSS is on Twitter! Say hello to Dave Winer (@davewiner).
Grabbing RSS feeds
If you have a smartphone that has RSS capabilities, you can use that smartphone to get Twitter while you’re on the go. To grab the RSS feed for your Home screen, click the RSS button in the bottom-left of the status window and follow the specific instructions for your RSS reader. If