I've decided to learn Python, Qt, and related technologies because they make the most sense for where I am going.

I want to start with a web service since I will need to get up to speed on wsdl, etc, fairly quickly for work. (EDIT: see note below)

I'll sketch out my idea here first because I want to capture thoughts in a place I almost live () but second because I want to expose the idea in case others are interested in participating.

The basic idea of Beaker is a twitter web service that could be integrated into discussion pages. The program would capture lengthy post content, partition it into 2 or more twitter-length chunks that include key metadata and then submit the tweets.

Chunks would be prefixed by "x/y" whereas "x" is the number of the chunk from first to last, and "y" is the total number of chunks. Chunks would be suffixed by a bit.ly url pointing back to the original comment, article, etc.

I'm fairly adept at building logical parsing engines in general so I can model this easily-- but I'm very new to Python and related tools so it will take me a while to get going on implementation. Again, I am not opposed to anyone stepping in for that BUT in a transparent way that will help me (and others) learn.

Later I will write up some pseudo code to get the modeling underway.

EDIT: it occurred to me it makes more sense to do this in javascript I think...

You might want to consider a RESTful API for webservices instead of going with a full blown SOAP/WSDL interface - will make things more lightweight.

I'll look into that, thanks!

Pseudocode:

let me know if I missed anything! This is pretty rough

I could sure use some help on this.

I have almost zero experience with web service development, so I'm not really sure where to start other than the pseudocode I posted above. I only know that I want this to work like other utilities, such as those for facebook, twitter, et al, that can be hosted on a web page and Just Work.

Ideas?

Texrat - I started a python/qt application from scratch less than 2 weeks ago. That included installing a full ubuntu partition on my laptop, the maemo sdk, learning python, qt and integrating with a webservice. My app works - just packaging problems (lots) that I am struggling with.

The webservice I used was based upon SOAP, and that was very easy to do with some googling and using the python-suds module. Let me know if you need some help - I may be able to muddle my way through. Cheers!

I just saw your packaging post-- hope someone can figure it out!

With this project I mainly wanted to create a web service app/plugin/whatever, but I'm also going to get it to run on the N900 if I can. Maybe the witter developer or others could find a use for the result.

Ahhh - I missed that - mea culpa. In any case, the offer (as little as it may be), still stands

I think I understood the word 'twitter'.

When you have time, a quick explanation of what this will do and why I might want it in words comprehensible to a bear of very little brain would be gratefully received.

I'm a user of twitter (among other things, I try to greet every single person who announces a new #n900!) so anything to make twitter easier is good for me. I currrently use Witter, and am very grateful to Daniel for it.

The idea is a utility that will break big posts into serialized twitter messages.