Based on the retro arcade experience, complete with custom 8 bit sounds and black backgrounds, Electron Zero whisks you to the golden age of simple and fun gaming.

Check it out at http://electron.zero.com.

ApplicationLoader error:"Info.plist does not contain a CFBundleResourceSpecification"
iTunesConnect error:"The binary you uploaded was invalid. The signature was invalid, or it was not signed with an Apple submission certificate."

After a few several hours we finally found an answer to this problem via this post.

It appears that when you have more than one SDK reference in your project, XCode can get confused. We were using ScoreLoop in our application, and that is provided as an SDK to include.

The solution is to go to the target build properties (⌘-I) and to add $(SDKROOT)/ResourceRules.plist to the “Code Signing Resource Rules Path” key.

Thanks a lot Sixten Otto!

For me, the easiest way to deal with this problems is to do a project reference in your project.
Let’s take a simple example. Your project (Main Project) uses a library (Library Project) like Cocos2D or FBConnect…

Step 1: Link the project
Open both projects (the Main project and the Library project). Drag the Library Project root (the little blue xcode icon file) to your Main Project root.

Drag the lib project to the main project

If you look in the project, you’ll see the products of the library project.

The linked project will present the products

Step 2: Create the dependencies
Now that your Main project is linked the the Lib project, it’s time to tell him which product you’re going to use.
Go to your target and open Get Info (CMD-i). Go to the “general” tab. In the window “Direct dependency” press +. The Lib Project should appear. Click on the lib you want to use.

Add a dependency with the product

Now Drag the lib to the Link Binary with a Library folder.

link the lib to the binary

Step 3: The (in)famous header files

I havent found the best solution to this, but the one i prefer is to create a source tree entry… Hey come back, it’s really easy!
Open your Xcode preferences (CMD-,), go to the “Source Trees” tab.
Add an entry with the name of your lib and the path to this lib.

add a source tree

Here now this path will be accessible by using $(FBCONNECT).
So now we can go to the main target, and open the build properties (CMD-i). Go to
BE SURE TO CHOOSE “ALL CONFIGURATION” in the drop box in the top left corner.
User Header Search Path section and add your recently created variable (For me $(FBCONNECT)). Check the “recursive” check box on the left side.

Add the source tree var

If it’s correct, the path should be resolved.

Step 4: Finished!
Here we are! It’s ready to build.
It’s an easy way to always have the last version of the used lib without any extra configuration.
This source tree is an easy way to share some library projects between over projects.

Hope it helps.

A small problem arises though when you don’t have enough data to fill all the sections. Let’s use an example where we mimic the Address Book / Contacts functionality on the iPhone. We would return 27 (26 letters plus one for strange characters) for numberOfSectionsInTableView:, and we might write some code as follows:

- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
    return 27;
}

- (NSInteger)tableView: (UITableView *)tv numberOfRowsInSection: (NSInteger)section
{
    return [[m_users objectAtIndex: section] count];
}

- (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    unichar ch = section < 26 ? 'A' + section : '#';
    return [NSString stringWithCharacters: &ch length: 1];
}

- (NSArray *)sectionIndexTitlesForTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
    NSMutableArray *titles = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity: 27];
    unichar ch;
    UInt32 i;

    for (i = 0; i < 26; i++)
    {
        ch = 'A' + i;
        [titles addObject: [NSString stringWithCharacters: &ch length: 1]];
    }

    ch = '#';
    [titles addObject: [NSString stringWithCharacters: &ch length: 1]];
    return titles;
}

By default, if you say a section exists, and then simply say there are zero cells in it, you can get an ugly effect by which two (or more) section headers will be stuck together:

Ugly Section Headers

Your first instinct might be to remove entirely those sections with zero users, and carry this across to all your code for the UITableView:

- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
  NSUInteger i;
  NSInteger count = 0;

  for (i = 0; i < [m_users count]; i++)
  {
    if ([[m_users objectAtIndex: i] count] > 0) count++;
  }
  return count;
}

but then you'd find that your index on the right would also be missing a few items as well.

The ultimate solution is quite simple:

Indicate that your UITableView has the full number of sections, but beturn @"" as the section title for those sections with no content.

- (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    if ([[m_users objectAtIndex: section] count] == 0) return @"";

    unichar ch = section < 26 ? 'A' + section : '#';
    return [NSString stringWithCharacters: &ch length: 1];
}

Section headers with @"" as a title will not be shown, but will remain in the index on the right if you do give them a title there. And that's all there is to it.

There are a few things that can cause this error, but in our case it was actually an expired provisioning profile on the device.

The solution:

1. On the iPhone, go to Settings, General, and then Profiles.
2. Look through the list and find the expired profile — it will usually have some red text stating it has expired
3. Zoom in on the certificate and then click on the remove button, and confirm

Your apps should be able to run again.

Happy developing.

The problem with this is that every time I connect my iPhone to that development mac, iPhoto comes up, which is annoying. It slows things down, and I have to always take that extra step to cancel and close it.

To get around this is easy:

1. Connect your iPhone to your mac
2. Launch Image Capture from /Applications.
3. Click on your iPhone in the list of devices
4. In the bottom left, Select “No Application” in the drop-down for “Connecting this iPhone opens:”

And you’re done!

Happy iPhone’ing!

First go to the Developer documentation and search for “Reachability” (or here: Online Apple Doc: Reachability ): Apple provided this class to simplify the way to monitor the network of an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Open the project and copy these files to your project: Reachability.m and Reachability.h.

This class relies on the “SystemConfiguration” Framwork, so you need to add it to your project:

• Control+click on your Framework folder in X-code
• Choose Add> Existing Frameworks…
• Search for “SystemConfiguration.Framework” and add it

Now you can use the Reachability class somewhere in your code like that:

if([[Reachability reachabilityForInternetConnection] currentReachabilityStatus] == NotReachable) {
	UIAlertView *error = [[UIAlertView alloc]
			initWithTitle: @"No Internets??"
			message: @"Check your Wifi settings"
			delegate: self
			cancelButtonTitle: @"Ok, i'll do it" otherButtonTitles: nil];
		[error show];

}

Of Course you can change the test to something else:

• ReachableViaWWan : means WIFI or 3G
• ReachableViaWifi: means only WIFI
• NotReachable: no connection at all

Simple!

Facebook’s engineers released an iPhone version of fbconnect few months ago. Now iphone applications are able to use the Facebook api to retrieve friends of the user, post things on the wall, etc…

We’ll see through this tutorial how to change the user status from an iphone application.

Adding facebook functionality to your native iPhone applications is surprisingly easy.  In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of adding the facebook libraries and incorporating them into your application.

1 prerequisites:

-A facebook developer account and a new empty app (To have an API key and an application secret for api calls). To create a new one, read this Facebook getting started : http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php

-Download the FBConnect for iphone : http://github.com/facebook/facebook-iphone-sdk/

2 compile as a lib

1. The FBConnect project you downloaded is configured to create the fbconnect library. There are only a few things to do to be able to build it: change the SDK you’re compiling against and the configuration. You may want to set it to your iPhone version ( for example 3.1 ) and change the configuration to debug (Upper left combo list).

Build/Target platform options combo list

Now, control click on the target, and choose build “FBPlatform”;

But you’ll need to build one library for the simulator and one for the device. So each time you’ll need to change the lib depending if you’re testing on your device or on the simulator. To avoid that, we’ll pack all the libraries inside one using “lipo”.

First build the lib for the simulator in debug config, and then build for the device (iPhone OS) in debug mode as well.

In the Terminal, go to your project directory :

$ cd your/project

then go to the build directory, in our case src/build/

$ cd src/build

you will have 2 directories: Debug-iphonesimulator and Debug-iphoneos

each contains the compiled lib.

$ ls Debug-iphonesimulator

libFBPlatform.a

we’ll use “lipo” (man lipo) to pack the two libs in one:

$ lipo -create Debug-iphonesimulator/libFBPlatform.a Debug-iphoneos/libFBPlatform.a -output libFBPlatform-debug.a

This will create a lib with the two version of the FBPlatform so you’ll never need to change each time you switch from the simulator to the device.

Create a “lib” directory in the fbconnect-iphone directory and move the just-created lib into it.

$ mkdir ../../lib

$ mv libFBPlatform-debug.a ../../lib

you may want to repeat the process with the release version of the lib…

3 Create your project

Create a new project (cmd + shift + n), choose View-based application.

1 Basic connection code

a) connect to Facebook:

FBConnect uses it’s own controls to connect to the Facebook platform: you must use the API to create a “FaceBook Connect Button”. When the user will click on the button, a Dialog Window will appear.

To connect to facebook, in the view controller:

0 - (void)viewDidLoad {

1 session = [FBSession sessionForApplication:API_KEY

2 secret:APP_SECRET

3 delegate:self];

4 FBLoginButton* button = [[FBLoginButton alloc] init];

5 [self.view addSubview:button];

6 [button release];

6 };

<API KEY> is the “api key” you’ll find in you Facebook application settings.

<APP_SECRET> is the “application secret”. 

This will create a facebook button in the view: the user will be able to connect to Facebook by clicking on it. A dialog will appear.

Once logged in, the FBConnect module will call the function: - (void)session:(FBSession*)session didLogin:(FBUID)id; This function is defined in the protocol <FBSessionDelegate> . So if you look at line 3 of our code, we set the delegate of this call to self. So this class should implement the <FBSessionDelegate> protocol by adding this “session: didLogin:” function. This function will contain the code to execute once the user is connected.

For now we can just put a log in this function:

- (void)session:(FBSession*)session didLogin:(FBUID)uid {

NSLog(@”User %lld connected”, uid);

}

don’t forget to add that the class implements the <FBSessionDelegate> protocol in the interface:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

#import “FBConnect/FBConnect.h”

@interface FBConnectExampleViewController : UIViewController <FBSessionDelegate> {

FBSession *session;

}

@end

To be able to compile we must add some more informations:

-include the libFBPlatform.a

Project>add to project (option meta a) , and then go to the fbconnect-iphone/lib directory. Choose the libFBPlatform-debug.a and click on add.

Move the added lib to the framework group or create a lib group.

-specify the headers path

on the sidebar, control click on the project root (you project name) and choose get info (meta i). Go in the “build” tab and search for “header”

in the “User header search path” add the path to the fbconnect-iphone directory which contains the FBConnect directory; usually ../fbconnect-iphone/src/

Header path

-add the FBConnect.bundle to the resources

the libFBPlatorm lib uses some resources (specially for the button), so you need to add the bundle into your project. Project>add to project (option meta a), go to the fbconnect-iphone/src and add the FBConnect.bundle file. Move it to your Resources group.

now build and run (command r)

you should see a button in the upper left corner. if you click on it, a dialog will appear requesting your username/email and password. if you correctly fill the form and click on connect, the debug console should write something like:

[Session started at 2009-11-05 11:53:24 +0800.]

2009-11-05 11:54:00.400 FBConnectExample[3463:207] User <USERID> connected

If you see that, it’s all good!

3bis Troubleshooting

i runs, but I don’t see the button:

-are you sure you imported the FBConnect.bundle?

-have you added the button to the view?

…

4 Calling an API Function

1 retrieve the status

We’ll not use an API call to retrieve the status of the user.

FBConnect platform API call uses, like the connection, delegates to receive the response from the Facebook Platform: When you call an api you must reference a delegate which will handle the response.

Let’s create a function retrieve the userStatus:

0 - (void)getStatus {

1 NSDictionary *params = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:

2 @"1", @"limit",

3 nil];

4 [[FBRequest requestWithDelegate:statusUpdateDelegate] call:@”facebook.Status.get” params:params];

5 }

The parameters of the API call must be in a dictionary. Here we just specify the amount of statuses we want to retrieve.

on line 4, like the connection, we set the delegate for the request. Like previously, we can set the view controller be this Delegate (have to implement the FBRequestDelegate protocol), but if you have several api calls, the same response function will be called…

An elegant solution is to create one delegate object for each api call.

Let’s then create the StatusUpdateDelegate (command n, new objective c class). This class must implement the FBRequestDelegate protocol:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

#import “FBConnect/FBConnect.h”

@interface StatusUpdateDelegate : NSObject <FBRequestDelegate> {

NSString *message;

}

The 2 main functions that we are interested in are:

- (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didLoad:(id)result;

- (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didFailWithError:(NSError*)error;

The “didLoad” function is call when the results are ready to be processed.

For now we just want to Log the status:

0 - (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didLoad:(id)result {

1      NSArray* statuses = result;

2 NSDictionary* status = [statuses objectAtIndex:0];

3 message = [status objectForKey:@"message"];

4 NSLog(@”status : %@”, message);

5 }

The result comes in an array containing dictionaries. For more informations try to log directly the array.

Now instanciate this class in our view controller:

in the viewDidLoad method:

statusUpdateDelegate = [[StatusUpdateDelegate alloc] init];

Where statusUpdateDelegate is a member field of the view controller.

Now let’s call the status request function and we’ll be fine:

in the view controller:

- (void)session:(FBSession*)session didLogin:(FBUID)uid {

NSLog(@”User %lld connected”, uid);

[self getStatus];

}

TO recap we have the following code:

ViewController.m:

- (void)viewDidLoad {

[super viewDidLoad];

session = [FBSession sessionForApplication:API_KEY

secret:APP_SECRET

delegate:self];

FBLoginButton* button = [[FBLoginButton alloc] init];

[self.view addSubview:button];

[button release];

statusUpdateDelegate = [[StatusUpdateDelegate alloc] init];

}

- (void)viewDidUnload {

[statusUpdateDelegate dealloc];

}

- (void)session:(FBSession*)session didLogin:(FBUID)uid {

NSLog(@”User %lld connected”, uid);

[self getStatus];

}

- (void)getStatus {

NSDictionary *params = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:

@"1", @"limit",

nil];

[[FBRequest requestWithDelegate:statusUpdateDelegate] call:@”facebook.Status.get” params:params];

}

- (void)dealloc {

[session.delegates removeObject:self];

[super dealloc];

}

StatusUpdateDelegate.m:

- (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didLoad:(id)result {

NSArray* statuses = result;

NSDictionary* status = [statuses objectAtIndex:0];

message = [status objectForKey:@"message"];

NSLog(@”status : %@”, message);

}

- (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didFailWithError:(NSError*)error {

NSLog(@”ERROR on status update: %@”, error);

}

Build and run (command r), connect, and after a while the status message should appear in the debug console.

5 Post a new status

now we’ll post the new user status.

But to do that, we need extended rights…

To obtains those rights, the user must allow it via a Facebook platform dialog.

To simplify the process, we’ll display the dialog when the user successfully logged in; so in the view controller, function session:didlogin :

0 – (void)session:(FBSession*)session didLogin:(FBUID)uid {

1 NSLog(@”User %lld connected”, uid);

2 FBPermissionDialog* dialog = [[FBPermissionDialog alloc] init];

3 dialog.delegate = self;

4 dialog.permission = @”status_update”;

5 [dialog show];

6 [dialog release];

7 [self getStatus];

8 }

The code to add is between line 2 and 6.

The permission dialog works like the session and api call: it needs a delegate. To keep it simple we’ll say that the delegate is the view controller (this class must now implement the FBDialogDelegate), and we’ll add the function “dialogDidSucceed”:

- (void)dialogDidSucceed:(FBDialog*)dialog {

NSLog(@”Extended rights approved”);

}

Note that we ask for specific rights on line 4; each different actions needs different rights (The API documentation explains this).

Now that we have extended rights on the status update, we can post a new status by using an API call:

-(void)setStatus:(NSString *)status {

NSString *statusString = status;

NSDictionary *params = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:

statusString, @"status",

@"true", @"status_includes_verb",

nil];

[[FBRequest requestWithDelegate:setStatusDelegate] call:@”facebook.Users.setStatus” params:params];

}

No fancy stuff here, same as before: setStatusDelegate is a delegate class which implements FBRequestDelegate protocol.

6 Comments

Facebook Connect for iphone is simple to use: you can add very quickly a social aspect to your application. Now it’s up to you to imagine an awesome application.

Here’s a small project using what we saw here: Facebook Example

The example project screenshot

Prerequisites

You’ll need:

• Mac OS X 10.6 (I’m using 10.6.2 right now)
• Xcode 3.2.1 (It’s under “Optional Installs” on your Snow Leopard DVD)
• The Terminal.app Program (go to Applications / Utilities) — If you’re completely new to Terminal and bash, please Google “mac terminal bash tutorial” and read one or more of the articles there quickly.

In this tutorial, we’re going to be operating out of ~/work (the “work” subdirectory of your Home folder). Whenever we say “download x.y.z.tar.gz”, we assume you download it and put it in that folder. If you’re downloading using your favourite web browser, it usually places them in ~/Downloads. So, to move “x.y.z.tar.gz” to ~/work, you can usually just type:

$ mv ~/Downloads/x.y.z.tar.gz ~/work

Let’s get Going

Prepare a cup of coffee or three, and put a DVD on, because you’re going to be watching your computer compile software a lot.

Before you start

Start Terminal.app and type:

$ mkdir work
$ cd work

MySQL 5.1

I went to dev.mysql.com/downloads and Downloaded mysql-5.1.41-osx10.5-x86_64.dmg for “Mac OS X (package format) 10.5 (x86_64)”.

After the .dmg has finished downloading, just mount and run the installer.

memcache

Download (and put in ~/work):

• libmemcached-0.35.tar.gz from http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html
• libevent-1.4.13-stable.tar.gz from http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent/
• memcached-1.4.3.tar.gz from http://memcached.org
  

These are all trivial to compile and install:

$ tar xfz libevent-1.4.13-stable.tar.gz
$ cd libevent-1.4.13-stable
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz memcached-1.4.3tar.gz
$ cd memcached-1.4.3
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz libmemcached-0.35.tar.gz
$ cd libmemcached-0.35
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

OpenSSL

Although Mac OS X comes with a pretty comprehensive version of OpenSSL, I always like to compile the latest into my AMP libraries.

Download openssl-0.9.8l.tar.gz from openssl.org

$ tar xfz openssl-0.9.8l.tar.gz
$ cd openssl-0.9.8l
$ ./config && make && make test && sudo make install

CURL

Download curl-7.19.7.tar.gz from curl.haxx.se

$ tar xfz curl-7.19.7.tar.gz
$ cd curl-7.19.7
$ ./configure --with-ssl=/usr/local/ssl --enable-thread
$ make && sudo make install

ImageMagick (and other graphics libs)

Download:

• freetype-2.3.11.tar.bz2 from freetype.org
• jpegsrc.v7.tar.gz from ijg.org
• libpng-1.2.40-no-config.tar.gz from libpng.org
• tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz from libtiff.org
• ImageMagick-6.5.7-9.tar.bz2 from imagemagick.org

And here we goooooo:

$ tar xfj freetype-2.3.11.tar.bz2
$ cd freetype-2.3.11
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz libpng-1.2.40-no-config.tar.gz
$ cd libpng-1.2.40-no-config
$ cp scripts/makefile.darwin Makefile
$ make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
$ cd jpeg-6b
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
$ cd tiff-3.8.2
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

$ cd ..
$ tar xfj ImageMagick-6.5.7-9.tar.bz2
$ cd ImageMagick-6.5.7-9
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

LibSSH2 (for communicating with SSH servers in code)

Download libssh2-1.2.2.tar.gz from libssh2.org.

$ tar xfz libssh2-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd libssh2-.1.2.2
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install

Apache Project HTTPD

Download httpd-2.2.14.tar.bz2 from httpd.apache.org

$ tar xfj httpd-2.2.14.tar.bz2
$ cd httpd-2.2.14
$ ./configure --enable-rewrite --enable-so --enable-deflate
$ make && sudo make install

PHP and appropriate PECL extensions

We’re going to build PHP with the following extensions in it:

• mysqli
• mysql
• imagick (from PECL)
• APC (code caching, from PECL)
• SOAP
• memcache
• memcached (newer and cooler)
• OpenSSL
• multi-byte string and character support
• CURL
• SSH2

You’ll need to go to pecl.php.net and download:

• APC-3.1.3p1.tgz
• imagick-2.3.0.tgz
• memcache-2.2.5.tgz
• memcached-1.0.0.tgz
• ssh2-0.11.0.tgz

Now, download PHP 5.3.1. from php.net

Get ready to patch your PHP to handle some changes in Snow Leopard:

Copy the following into a file called “patch” — Remember where you put this (i.e. ~/work/patch):

--- php-5.3.0/ext/iconv/iconv.c 2009-03-16 22:31:04.000000000 -0700
+++ php/ext/iconv/iconv.c   2009-07-15 14:40:09.000000000 -0700
@@ -51,9 +51,6 @@
 #include 
 #endif

-#ifdef HAVE_LIBICONV
-#undef iconv
-#endif

 #include "ext/standard/php_smart_str.h"
 #include "ext/standard/base64.h"
@@ -182,9 +179,6 @@
 }
 /* }}} */

-#ifdef HAVE_LIBICONV
-#define iconv libiconv
-#endif

 /* {{{ typedef enum php_iconv_enc_scheme_t */
 typedef enum _php_iconv_enc_scheme_t {

The next thing we have to do is add the PECL extensions into PHP:

$ tar xfj php-5.3.1.tar.bz2
$ cd php-5.3.1/ext/iconv

# if it asks you what file to patch, just say "iconv.c"
$ patch -p1 < ~/work/patch # or whatever path you used for the patch file

$ cd ..
$ tar xfz ../../APC-3.1.3p1.tgz
$ mv APC-3.1.3p1 apc
$ tar xfz ../../imagick-2.3.0.tgz
$ mv imagick-2.3.0 imagick
$ tar xfz ../../memcache-2.2.5.tgz
$ mv memcache-2.2.5 memcache
$ tar xfz ../../memcached-1.0.0.tgz
$ mv memcached-1.0.0 memcached
$ tar xfz ../../ssh2-0.11.0.tgz
$ mv ssh2-0.11.0 ssh2
$ cd ..
$ rm configure
$ ./buildconf --force    #(it's okay to ignore the warnings here)
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
 --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --enable-imagick \
 --enable-apc --enable-soap --enable-memcache --with-zlib \
 --with-openssl=/usr --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --with-curl \
 --enable-memcached --enable-ssh2
$ make && sudo make install

Once PHP is done compiling and installing, you want to edit /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf and make sure that you add the line

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml

to the section ... Also make sure that the line

LoadModule php5_module        modules/libphp5.so

exists in the file too.

Starting things up

To start MySQL:

$ sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

To Start Apache2

$ sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

And that should be it! Configure your httpd.conf and extras/httpd-vhost.conf files to reflect your development environment, and run with it! By default, your httpd document root is /usr/local/apache2/htdocs, but I almost always create various virtual hosts in ~/src/xyz.

Clean Up

If everything works great, you can just remove the ~/work directory and all will be cleaned up and your machine will be running a nice happy AMP stack!

Good luck!

The real problem with the new Twitter retweet functionality is that it destroys the chain of trust. The point of the retweet is that somebody whom I find interesting found something else interesting and wants to share that info, all the while crediting the original author.

One of the reasons I have a list of people I follow is that I’ve come to respect them for the information they share and send around with Twitter. I don’t know who @joeblow12345abc is, but when @my_bff_forever forwards an article that just so happens to have originally been sent by the former, I’ll probably read it.

So, the problem with Twitter now is that when I got to the website, I see a tweet from @joeblow12345abc on my home page. I don’t know this person, and I sit for a few seconds wondering what on earth he’s doing in my tweet list. It’s only after looking at the bottom of the tweet in tiny letters do I see that it’s been forwarded by somebody I am following. It goes against the whole point of Twitter. The community has done a good job of setting up the standards for tweet formats thus far — probably best to let them continue.