Update Twitter and iChat status messages with Quicksilver

Oh this was totally the highlight of my day.

First, you should all get twitter accounts. Mine is http://twitter.com/hoist2k

Next you should all get Quicksilver (this is not optional and I really can’t believe you don’t use it)

(Oh and I assume you all use OS X)

Copy and paste the following code into ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Scripts/twitterStatus.scpt (you might have to create the dir)

—- SNIP START CODE —-

using terms from application “Quicksilver”on process text tweet

tell application “Keychain Scripting”

set twitter_key to first Internet key of current keychain whose server is “twitter.com”

set twitter_login to quoted form of (account of twitter_key & “:” & password of twitter_key)

end tell

set twitter_status to quoted form of (”status=” & tweet)

set results to do shell script “curl –user ” & twitter_login & ” –data-binary ” &

twitter_status & ” http://twitter.com statuses/update.json”

– display dialog results

tell application “iChat” to set status message to tweet

return nothing

end process text

end using terms from

—–SNIP END CODE ——

Next, open Keychain and add an entry for a new internet site: http://twitter.com. Make the username and password your twitter info (login is email).

You may have to edit Quicksilver prefs to look in that newly created folder and restart it. YMMV. Restarting quicksilver is really hard because when it’s off, you can’t use it to launch itself )

Finally, you can “twit” or whatever your keystroke is, followed by tab-tab (the action should be “process text”) and type your text. Coolio!

PS I can’t take credit for the site (see trackback URL), but that site has some typos (incorrect fonts in the script and a file named .scrpt and not .scpt, but it won’t accept my useful suggestions in the comments due to buggy captchas