If you use Windows Live Messenger, there's a good chance you've heard of Mess.be, the Messenger customization community. Last week, "dwergs" from Mess sent me an email, expressing interest in Twessenger after reading my initial post about it. I think he was also the first person to try it out after I released it.

Then, Twessenger made it to the front page of Mess.be yesterday:

Here's something cool for the 24/7 Messer, something I've been waiting for to be developed since a couple of weeks. If you're anything like me and stay logged in continuously for days and days -even when you're out- you sometimes read instant messages like "Are you there?" or "Where are you going tonight?" only when you return. Not everyone's always strict with his or her Messenger status, you see. But what if you could alter your Personal Status Message from any remote location with the use of your mobile phone? Enter: Twessenger, an add-in for Windows Live Messenger written by Kunal Kundaje.

Twessenger makes use of the popular Twitter service, which allows its users to let others know what exactly they're up to. So all you need to do is sign up for an account at Twitter, make sure the "Protect my updates" box in your profile account is unticked and find your Twitter ID (it's the six digit number in your Flash badge code or at the end of the Favorites URL).

Then download and install Twessenger, add the add-in to Windows Live Messenger, and enter your Twitter ID in its settings (refer to the README.TXT inside the ZIP-file for all you need to know, really). Finally, when you enable it you'll see your Personal Status Message turn into your latest "Tweet" (updates appear in about a minute). You can add Tweets from your phone's browser, or if you do not have a data subscription you can text them to a UK or US-based phone number.

You can use this for realtime presence management, current location indication or just for sharing random thoughts and impressions with your contacts.

Thanks, dwergs!

According to their stats, it's been downloaded 175 times (at the time of this post) in the first ~14 hours. That's not including direct downloads from the Twessenger page. :)

I've received some nice feedback so far, and I'm glad people are finding this useful. Feel free to continue sending in your comments, suggestions, and any bugs that you may find using the contact form.

Thanks to Marc at Office Evolution for bringing this to my attention.

It looks like Dell has launched a site called IdeaStorm, where people can submit ideas for new Dell products and services, and vote for their favorite ones. The voting system works a lot like digg, where the most popular items move up to the top of the list.

Several folks are asking Dell for a Tablet PC, which is something I've wanted to see for a long time too. As Marc suggests, Dell's entry into the Tablet PC market would definitely be a good boost for the platform in general. Besides, Dell notebooks are already some of the most widespread machines among the student population, a segment of the market that would benefit the most from the features that Tablet PCs have to offer.

I've been using my Gateway Tablet on campus for the last several months, and I find it so much more versatile compared to paper now. I can insert additional space between paragraphs on-the-fly in OneNote (great when your professor makes a disorganized mess on the whiteboard!), easily intersperse diagrams and equations with text, and search through vast amounts of handwritten notes almost instantly when I need to before exams, etc.

If you'd like to see a Dell Tablet too, go vote for the idea. There's a lot of other good feedback, including requests for machines with less pre-installed software. So check out the site and vote for the things that you'd like to see.

The first version of Twessenger, the Twitter add-in for Windows Live Messenger, is now up! Along with a hastily-thrown-together web page. :)

The add-in has been tested with Messenger 8.1.0178.00, the latest available public version. If you have comments, feedback, feature requests, or bug reports, use the contact form to send me a message.

Happy Twittering. :)

Hahaha! You gotta check out this video on YouTube. :D

I blogged about Twitter, the fun little "global status message" service, last month, and I've been using it quite frequently since then.

I wanted my IM status messages to reflect my latest Twitter tweets, but since I was pretty busy during the last few weeks, I was mostly hoping someone else would do it. I found some plugins for Adium and iChat, but nothing for us Windows folks.

So here's my contribution to the Twitter community - Twessenger, an add-in for Windows Live Messenger, written in C#. :)


As you can see, it's almost complete. I just have to clean up a few things, package it up into a nice installer, and it'll be ready for release. Stay tuned.

And if you're not already on Twitter, sign up and add me. :)