Catfood Software Blog

End of life for Catfood Follower and Twitter Screensaver

Rob — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:51:20 -0700

The Twitter v1 API is being switched off on Tuesday, May 7, 2013. After the experience I had with Catfood Cleat I decided not to waste any more time in Twitter API development and so I’m withdrawing my two remaining products that depend on Twitter.

Catfood Follower was a popular tool for automatically following new friends on Twitter and helping with the process of removing traitors.

Catfood Twitter Screensaver showed random public tweets in a Windows screensaver. It’s the first fun thing I ever did with the Twitter API.

Both products are no longer available for download. I’ll help with any support requests before the May 7 shutdown but I’d recommend that you uninstall and look for an alternative tool before the v1 Twitter API is retired.

Note that Twitter will be running blackout tests before the full shutdown where they temporarily disable the v1 API so you’ll see occasional failures even before May 7.

Spring (Vernal) Equinox 2013 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:02:00 -0700

Spring! Or south of the equator, Autumn!

Winter Solstice 2012 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:12:00 -0700

It’s the start of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer if your water goes the wrong way down the plughole. Rendered in Catfood Earth, now also available for Android.

Catfood Earth for Android 1.10

Rob — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:59:45 -0700

Catfood Earth for Android 1.10 is now available for download. If you already have it installed you’ll get the update automatically (or run Google Play to check for updates).

1.10 adds settings that allow you to manually override the center of the image (rather than using your phone location), control transparency (for clouds and night) and adjust the width of the terminator between day and night.

Catfood Earth also starts faster and there are a number of small bug fixes.

Installing Catfood Earth or Catfood WebCamSaver on Windows 8

Rob — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:35:23 -0700

If you get an error message when installing Catfood Earth or Catfood WebCamSaver on Windows 8 it’s probably because the .NET 2.0 Framework is missing. Earth and WebCamSaver install .net 2.0 automatically on previous versions of Windows but in Windows 8 this doesn’t work. Luckily it’s easy to fix:

1. From the Start screen click the search charm (the magnifying glass icon that appears when you put your mouse in the bottom right hand corner of the screen) of just start typing to search for ‘Programs and Features’. Click the ‘Settings’ option on the search pane and then click ‘Programs and Features’ in the search results.

2. Programs and Features runs on the Windows Desktop. Click ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ in the list of options on the left hand side of the window.

3. At the top of the list check ‘.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)’ and then click OK. Windows might ask you to download the installation files. Once installation is complete run the installer for Catfood Earth or Catfood WebCamSaver again.

I’ll update the installers for the next release of each product to fix this problem.

WebCams for Android 1.10

Rob — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 15:30:11 -0700

I’ve just released a small update for Catfood WebCams. You should get this automatically through Google Play, or you can run Play Store on your phone or tablet and go to ‘My Apps’ to check for updates manually.

If you run Android and don’t have Catfood WebCams you can learn more here.

Vernal Equinox 2012 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 07:49:00 -0700

It’s the start of Autumn in the northern hemisphere, Spring down south. In Catfood Earth:

In Catfood Earth for Android:

Catfood Earth for Android

Rob — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 15:49:27 -0700

Catfood Earth is now available for Android phones and tablets.

The Android version of Catfood Earth is a live wallpaper that automatically centers on your current location. It includes current cloud cover (downloaded every three hours) and includes a different satellite image for each month (showing changes in vegetation and snow/ice cover) as well as showing city lights where it’s currently dark and shading the terminator between day and night.

Catfood Earth for Android is based on my Windows desktop wallpaper of the same name, optimized for smaller screens and to limit power consumption on mobile devices.

Buy it now for just $3.99 from Google Play. Catfood Earth for Android supports Android 2.2 and up.

WebCams on Android

Rob — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:43:51 -0700

The entire contents of the Catfood WebCam Directory are now available in an Android app. Each cam can be fully controlled. Tap the edges of the image to pan around and pinch the screen to zoom in and out. You can also share the current snapshot.

Download Catfood WebCams from Google Play (all devices with 2.2 or later and a touch screen are supported) and let me know what you think via email or in the comments below.

End Of Life for Cleat and Windows Mobile

Rob — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 16:00:12 -0700

I’m sad to have to withdraw support for Catfood Cleat, my command line client for Twitter. Twitter disabled Cleat last week and won’t reply to emails asking for an explanation and so I have no choice but to stop providing this free tool. Much more here. If you have used Cleat I’d recommend uninstalling it.

The death of Windows Mobile is inevitable and so less sad but I no longer use a Windows phone of any sort and so there just aren’t going to be future updates or support for Tracker, TextShips or NPR Station Finder. If you still use any of these products this won’t affect their continued operation but I will no longer provider support or updates.

Summer Solstice 2012 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:09:00 -0700

Summer starts right now in the Northern Hemisphere, Winter for those south of the Equator. Rendered in Catfood Earth.

Catfood Software on Google+ and a Hangout Pledge

Rob — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:15:35 -0700

Catfood is now on Google+. Once 50 people have the Catfood Software page added to a circle I’ll host a Hangout. You can ask me anything about Catfood, request features or nag me about bugs.

Catfood Cleat 1.10

Rob — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:10:59 -0700

I’ve just released a small update to Catfood Cleat, my command line client for Twitter. 1.10 supports geolocation (you can include a longitude and latitude with the tweet) and timestamps (current date and time appended to the end of the tweet).

Vernal (Spring) Equinox 2012 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:14:00 -0700

Spring starts right now in the northern hemisphere, Autumn if you’re south of the equator. Image rendered using Catfood Earth.

Catfood PdfScan 1.40

Rob — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:35:59 -0700

I’ve just released Catfood PdfScan 1.40. This is a minor update that fixes a few bugs: crash on load checking for product updates when the Catfood web site is unavailable and crash when trying to set the image quality on a scanner that does not support this capability. This is a recommended update for all scanners of PDFs.

To Follow or Not To Follow: The Third Way

Rob — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:24:00 -0700

Mashable published an article by Christine Erickson today on whether small businesses should automatically follow back on Twitter. The article and comments just cover the extreme positions, automatically following everyone or manual follower management.

Some companies can get away with not following anyone, or maybe just following related accounts, but in most cases a business wants to engage with their followers.

Catfood Follower provides a third way thanks to integration with Klout. You can automatically follow anyone with a high enough Klout score. This helps weed spam and bots out of your stream (and following list) while ensuring that you follow authentic and influential accounts.

Protesting SOPA and PIPA

Rob — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:21:33 -0700

Catfood.net will be dark on January 18, 2012 to protest against SOPA and PIPA. Learn more on my personal blog.

Tweet from the Command Line

Rob — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:01:42 -0700

I’ve just released Catfood Cleat, a tool that tweets from the Windows command line.

Use cleat to automate tweets from Task Scheduler, tweet from batch files, or just when you want to share without leaving the console.

Cleat supports multiple Twitter accounts and will automatically shorten tweets to 140 characters if necessary so you don’t need to worry about the exact length when using Cleat for automation.

Download Cleat and let me know what you think.

Winter Solstice 2011 in Catfood Earth

Rob — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:30:00 -0700

It’s the start of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer if you’re of the negative latitude persuasion. Image rendered using Catfood Earth.

Catfood Follower 1.40

Rob — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:36:46 -0700

Catfood Follower 1.40 is now available for download.

Follower is now integrated with Klout, a service that measures the influence of Twitter users with a score ranging from 0-100. You can choose to only follow people above a certain Klout score, or to remove followers below a certain Klout score.

I’ve also added support for using Twitter Lists as unfollow exceptions. This is much easier than remembering to run Follower and add an exception for each account that you want to always follow. Just add people to a private ‘don’t unfollow’ list and then check this off in Follower Settings. You can add as many lists as you like as unfollow exceptions.

1.40 also includes a big performance boost. Under the covers accounts are now processed using Twitter APIs that return up to 5,000 friends or followers at a time. Before 1.40 Follower would process around 200 accounts per API call. This change means that Follower runs faster and is less likely to hit Twitter call limits.

If you already use Follower upgrade today. If not, and you’re looking for a way to manage your Twitter account check it out and read Getting the most out of Catfood Follower.