[Biopython-dev] Biopython on Twitter

[Peter]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Leighton Pritchard <lpritc at scri.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There's a fair old bit of chatter on the latest bandwagon: Twitter, about
> Biopython
> (http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=1393366734&page=1&q=biopython).
> Seeing as both BioPerl and the OBF have 'official' Twitter accounts, it
> might be useful to have a Biopython Twitter account as a way of getting news
> out automatically (there's a python-twitter API:
> http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/), and as a way of facilitating
> conversation or community around Biopython - suitable representatives of the
> official edifice/holders of the password no doubt to be discussed ;)
>
> Anyhoo, to avoid it being squatted in the interim, I've set up an account in
> Biopython's name, with Peter's email account (thanks, Peter) - he also knows
> the password.
>
> If no-one likes the idea or thinks it worthwhile, or Twitter goes the way of
> Gopher and OS/2 Warp in short order, it can just die on the vine - but given
> the number of tweets mentioning Biopython, it would be a shame for that to
> happen too soon ;)
>
> The Biopython Twitter home page is at http://twitter.com/Biopython

Quite a few people have started following this already - which is fun.  I see
the OBF news page entries are automatically pushed to their twitter account,
http://twitter.com/obf_news plus the BioPerl tagged entries are also pushed
to http://twitter.com/bioperl - I'll get in touch to see how they did
it so we can
have the Biopython news feed automatically echoed to twitter as well.

This servers as a good point to remind/inform you that there are RSS, Atom
etc feeds for the Biopython news - links on http://biopython.org/wiki/News

e.g.
http://news.open-bio.org/news/category/obf-projects/biopython/feed/rdf
http://news.open-bio.org/news/category/obf-projects/biopython/feed/rss
http://news.open-bio.org/news/category/obf-projects/biopython/feed/rss2
http://news.open-bio.org/news/category/obf-projects/biopython/feed/atom

We could probably also echo the CVS (or git) RSS feed into twitter, but I
suspect that would drown out any more interesting tweets.  The RSS feed
is listed on http://biopython.org/wiki/CVS and shown on the wiki too at:
http://biopython.org/wiki/Tracking_CVS_commits (not sure how often this
gets updated).  The feed itself is here:
http://biopython.open-bio.org/CVS2RSS/biopython.rss

Peter