An Introduction to @Tropo
Tropo is a Cloud API for voice, SMS, and IM. It's kind of similar to Asterisk wherein you can use it to build your own digital PBX by writing up some simple code. But really, it's more than that. Because it not only supports voice, but SMS and IM as well, the integration possibilities for this API are endless. Need to send out voice and text alerts to people? You can do that with Tropo. Need to have conference calls with other people? You can do that with Tropo. Need a support hotline with automatic call queueing, call recording, on-call games, text-to-speech and speech recognition support, and a way for customers to pay by phone? I think you get my point by now.
PHP Retweeter
This past week, I've been coding a little more than usual (outside of work, anyways). I've been working on a few personal things as well as some freelance stuff. But what this post is really about is a little script I put together a while ago to operate a Twitter bot, one that retweets things other users say and follows them back if they reply. I call it the PHP Retweeter (for obvious reasons). It's pretty cool. The concept itself is pretty old and there are probably a ton of guides out there on how to put one together, but I figured I'd release mine to give people yet another alternative. I based it on Abraham Williams' OAuth library for authentication and to send my API calls. Download it and give it a try.
Facebook’s “You are already a member of this network” Bug (UPDATED)
UPDATE: As of at least 08/16/2011, neither of the methods listed in this blog post will allow you to remove yourself from a network (i.e., they no longer work).
Recently, I ran into a situation where I no longer wanted to be part of a specific network on Facebook due to privacy concerns, so I left it (or so I thought). A few days ago, I changed my mind and wanted to add myself back to that same network. Unfortunately, for me, even though Facebook did not list that network anywhere on my profile or in my account's settings, it still "thought" that I was still part of it, either because whoever wrote the function for a user to leave a network didn't do a good job at it or because the original function call when I initiated the request got interrupted somehow.
Facebook's "You are already a member of this network" Bug
Figuring this was a common bug, I did a search for the error message and found this. It wasn't much help, but at least I knew I wasn't alone. I tried contacting Facebook to look into the bug, but got nothing but an automated response. After looking around on and fiddling around with my account's settings pages, I figured there might be a way to force the site into making me leave the network a second time. Find out what I did after the break.
UPDATED: I've added step-by-step instructions on how to fix this with some additional screenshots. Check it out after the break.