Power Twitter by 30 BoxesApril 9th, 2007 by Narendra |
We have just finished version 0.83 of Power Twitter, a plugin for Firefox web browser that greatly enhances twitter.
Twitter pages now include:
- Photo sharing with embedded flickr photos
- Video sharing with embedded youtube videos
- Shared tinyurls are unwound so you know where they link to
- All links are mapped to their web page titles
- Additional user information is mapped to twitter users thanks to data conduits via 30 Boxes (e.g. flickr accounts, blog posts, del.icio.us links, and tons of other social media!)
It is simple. “Save as” for the following xpi file:
http://30boxes.com/external/powertwitter.xpi
and then drop it on Firefox to install it. Restart your browser and try this test page.
Here’s a screenshot. Please give us feedback and report bugs in the forum.


30 Boxes!
April 9th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I like it! Would be cool if it unfurled urltea.com shortened urls too :)
April 9th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
That rocks! worked like a charm :)
April 9th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
One thing… when I played the youtube video it plays it but opens a link to the video in youtube. Anyone else see this happening?
April 10th, 2007 at 1:10 am
nice.
considered giving it an “Options” setup? would be nice to customize a few things:
- toggle each customized item
(i.e. checkbox next to “show web stuff updates,” “show URL titles,” “embed pix/videos,” etc. (i may want to take advance of some things, but not others…)
- show X number of recent web updates, or
- show X number of recent web updates per service
(i.e. 3 blog links, 3 flickr links, etc.)
can you also “unwind” links from other popular short-url services? twitteroo has bundled RURL, and urlTea is cool. not sure how much work that entails.
April 10th, 2007 at 1:12 am
also meant to add:
- customize link pre-text — “>> link to ” is a little long. would be nice to be able to insert your own (or no) text.
sorry to double-post.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:41 am
i can’t seem to embed anything…
April 10th, 2007 at 6:17 am
This maybe crazy talk, but you guys seem very excited about Twitter lately, and frankly between the Twitter’s failures to keep up with its growth and its limited use, I wonder if the team is too fired up about too little. Your cool new extension won’t even work for my profile. It just keeps loading and loading.
Twitter is a mediocre diversion, but 30boxes is the real effin’ deal and I’d love to see more functionality added to that. I noticed Supermail has been fully dropped from the Upcoming Features and more themes was pushed down again. But instead we get power Twitter?
April 10th, 2007 at 6:31 am
I love Power Twitter. It’s a nice.
April 10th, 2007 at 7:59 am
I have to agree with Mr. Cooper. The last few months we have seen numerous features for users who are wrapped up in the Twitter fad. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of 30 boxes users do not use Twitter and would rather be seeing some more productive fixes/features being worked on.
Please also realize that I’m not asking you how to run your business, as I do appreciate the wonderful application that 30boxes is, but please pay more attention to the things that improve your core application.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Ping from The Unofficial Twitter Community, Forums and Blog. We posted your Power Twitter release. Sounds like a great app!
http://www.twitterforum.com
April 10th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Jason,
Supermail has already been done. Click on the messages link in the top left of your calender page. Otherwise I would have to agree with you that the 30boxes team has gone twitter crazy. How about some offline 30boxes stuff like Apollo. Also project EDU needs some attention. 30boxes needs some on campus presence to compete with Google calender.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Does this work on a MAC as well? I just downloaded it and restarted my firefox and don’t see anything new? What am I looking for? Thanks.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:15 am
@HH — good ideas.
@Jason — the best thing on this blog is when people call us out! Most of the work on this plugin has been done for a while, it just took time to clean it up because I was traveling :-)
A word on twitter. It is definitely not driving our overall feature development. I treat it as another “communication stream” that for an increasing set of people is important to the 2 questions critical to 30B:
1) what am I doing today?
2) what are my friends doing today?
Now, it also happens that we share some office space with the twitter folks and it is easier to integrate and get excited about their product.
Finally, our new features typically are stepping stones toward either building a skillset or iterating toward a more refined version. For instance: our Webtop is no where near complete. In fact, it doesn’t even work well enough for me to use every day. But, I have been collecting ideas over the last year and hope to do an overhaul at some point soon.
There are increasingly a number of folks who are starting to encroach on one of our core competencies which is identity and social metadata so we are trying to put out a bunch of items that show how broad an impact this can have. We are toying with the idea of allowing your social network to live entirely within Firefox with built in sharing of links and files from the desktop.
Anyway, don’t worry, we have lots to do and we know it and will never stray too far!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
This isn’t workin for me.
I try to embed a YouTube vid and I just get a jumble of code, not the video…any ideas?
April 10th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Bug, when you click play on a emebbed video it opens a new window (it still plays in Twitter also)…
April 10th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I appreciate and value everyone’s replies. Part of the top features of 30b is the community that uses it.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:40 am
for ppl having trouble embedding photos and videos — all you have to do is post the URL for the photo/video. the extension does all the work embedding it in your browser.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Works great for me. This tool while not for everyone it definitely reinforces the image I have of 30b’s motto for “It’s your life”. I like this and I love seeing 30b interface with the API’s and Feeds of all the websites “in my life”.
aka the stuff *I* care about. Great jobs.
April 13th, 2007 at 3:13 am
Are the tinyurls “unwinding” for any of you guys?? Mine aren’t!
April 13th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Whoops! Tinyurl unwinding working fine now… Sorry!
April 24th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
great job
April 24th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I’m having the same problem as Tom Krieglstein. On a mac, restarted firefox, and see nothing different. No context menus, nothing. Must not work on Mac firefox for some reason
April 24th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Well, you need to be looking at a page with some stuff. Try http://twitter.com/30btest
April 25th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Unwrapping tinyurls OK, but I’m not seeing photos or videos when I “just post the URL”. Or any of the “additional user information”. So I’m puzzled. Are there supposed to be context menus?
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:41 am
I have no idea how to use this. How do I just, y’know, do stuff with PowerTwitter? Embed Video, embed photos? How?
(Also, installation was odd; why didn’t the XPI file just install itself?)
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
When you embed links in twitter the plugin does translation and embedding. So simply twitter a link to a youtube video and people looking at that page with Power Twitter will see the actual video (etc.)
May 5th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Mi extesion is not Working, I post links but nothing happens, any help?
May 7th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I can see the embeded videos and photos on http://twitter.com/30btest but if I post a link to youtube, there is no translation, it0s look like a text-url like this: link to YouTube - Drive
May 8th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I love it but could it not only unroll a tinyurl but unroll a tinyurl that is a flickr link and display a photo? example http://twitter.com/ChristianBurns/statuses/55535202
May 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Hi, i think you have the best firefox extension out of all that i found at
http://wtips.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-tools.html
May 9th, 2007 at 2:18 am
bummer! latest version not compatible w/ FF 2.0.0.3
“powertwitter 0.84 will only work with Firefox versions from 1.5 to 2.0b”
May 9th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I updated power twitter to allow for 2.1. Can we get confirmation of an install on a browser above 2.0b?
May 9th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
saw the twitter post, but can’t @30boxes… grabbed the link again, and this one worked. thanks!
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:12 am
Hey cool tool also look at http://www.twitterfaces.com through firefox looks awsome seeing live tweets from all over the world twitterfaces rocks!
August 8th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Hi!! I downloaded it, and restarted Firefox, but where does this app is located in? I can’t find it. I can see it’s installed on Firefox, since it shows on the Plug-in list, but I can’t see a signal of it on the layout of the explorer. Is it hidden somewhere? Or how do I see it? Or where is it supposed to be on?
August 19th, 2007 at 9:48 am
@ Narendra I am running the dutch Firefox ver 2.0.0.4 and pulbished a link with the twitterbar and it works.
August 21st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Why make us download the xpi file. Can you add xpi to your server’s mime file type?
You should add:
AddType application/x-xpinstall .xpi
to your .htaccess file