Twitter @Anywhere "stole" its concept from me!

Twitter @Anywhere "stole" its concept from my Twitsnap!

Yes, last May 2008 I've already built the first @Anywhere using Google App Engine and Google Sites. Unfortunately Google screwed the service after they disallowed uploaded files from being served directly thus the demise of Twitsnap. Now imagine 3 years later, hey here comes Twitter with the "great" idea, yeah right but they forgot to mention it wasn't original. My "initial" check reveals that for 3 years nobody ever created a clone of Twitsnap making me the only holder of "prior-art" claim.

Right now I don't even know what to think, maybe I'll release the entire source of TwitSnap under CC license for start. What should I do next? How can I even match up with a giant like Twitter who owns all our twits?

Please help, post your advise on the comments and thank you in advance!

My Twitter Fave: Fun with TwitSnap

The following are my favorite Twitter users I'm following:

introducing @mkeduardo, @aileenapolo, @digitalfilipino, @chattee, @eclair, @ajbatac, @jerryc (the insomiac :D), and @kuting (pinoytwitters.com)

TwitSnap

UPDATE: TwitSnap beta testing is now open to the public, go to http://www.twitsnap.com to register!

Today I'm releasing a beta-test of TwitSnap!

TwitSnap is a FREE widget that automatically provides Twitter status preview of a user like this: @godie

Notice that I'm using the conventional reply-to prefix for Twitter and nothing else! The widget will automatically parse your page and look for the pattern, convert it into a link to user's profile on Twitter and then provides a preview of the user's most current status via a pop-up Dhtml box.

TwitSnap is built using Google Apps Engine (Python runtime), some really wicked Regular Expressions (REGEX), insane DHTML JavaScripts and of course using the Twitter API.

There are still some few things needed to be ironed out:

• Google Apps Engine where the app is hosted has a bandwidth limit; dear Google, care to donate more bandwidth to me? :D


• Twitter limits the number of requests per IP; I'm still trying to contact them on having the service get increased limit.


• I'm just piggybacking on my neighbors' WIFI; Ok this isn't really a good reason but I wish to thank her for sharing the Interner access which allowed me to work at at.

Note: TwitSnap is not related to Twitter.com, this is work in progress. Use at your own risk! we do not guarantee that anything will work. It may even break your site rendering so use with caution.

TwitSnap has been tested on only FireFox, Opera and IE.