Sync bit.ly + Delicious + Twitter

bitly:

A few bit.ly users who also heavily use Delicious and Twitter have asked for an easier way to sync all these services. We recently came up with a pretty good way to automate this sync process using Twitterfeed.

1. Get the URL for the RSS feed of your delicious bookmarks, which looks like this:

http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/DELICIOUS_USERNAME?count=15
Tip: you can also sync only some of your Delicious bookmarks, eg, those tagged “share,” by adding /tagname to this URL, eg:
http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/DELICIOUS_USERNAME/share?count=15

2. Login to Twitterfeed.com. Create an account using Open ID if you don’t already have an account on Twitterfeed.

3. Create a new feed. Grant Twitterfeed access to post to your Twitter account by signing in with OAuth or supplying your username and password.

4. Paste the URL of your Delicious bookmarks RSS feed in the input labeled “RSS Feed URL.”

5. For the “Include” option, choose “description only.” This will grab the text / note you record with each Delicious bookmark and will become the body of each of your tweets.

6. Check the box labeled “Include Item Link” and choose bit.ly as your URL shortener.

7. Enter your bit.ly login name and API key ( you can get this from your bit.ly account page ) in the appropriate fields. This is important, as it will add your Delicious links to your bit.ly history.

8. Make sure the “Active” box is checked and save your new Twitterfeed.

Now, whenever you bookmark items in Delicious, they will automatically be posted to your Twitter account with bit.ly links. The import does not happen in real time, but if you can sacrifice a bit of lag/delay for the ease of automation, you should give this setup a try.

Expired food

I hate food expiration dates, don’t you? Who dares eat food past its expiration date? Most people wouldn’t. Naturally. But this is where it irritates me.

While Jerry Seinfeld once joked about expiration date on milk cartons (cows tell you when), here’s something else to think about.

Some packaging says, “Expiration date”. Straight forward isn’t it? You simply don’t question this one. If you do, do it at your own risk. People are going to laugh at you for eating something past its expiration date.

But other packaging say, “Best before”. Now what do you do? One day after the printed date, is it really not as good as the day prior? I mean it does not say, “Do not consume after such and such date”, rather it says, “after this date, it’s no longer in the best condition”.

So what if it’s no longer best, it’s still pretty good isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Unrelated: I just ate a cheese sandwich with BBQ sauce apparently 20 days past “Best When Used By” date.

What?

Sent from my iPhone