--- title: Twitter via e-mail date: "2010-10-26T17:24:45Z" lastmod: "2010-10-27T09:26:09Z" categories: - how-i-do-things - tools wp_id: 2548 description: I built Mixamail to use Twitter via email when I lacked mobile internet. Developed with Python on Google App Engine, it lets you tweet, read timelines, and reply to posts using simple email commands and daily digests. keywords: [twitter api, python, google app engine, email, blackberry, mixamail, oauth] --- Since I don’t have Internet access on my BlackBerry (because [I’m in prison](/blog/you-are-in-prison/)), I’ve had a pretty low incentive to use [Twitter](http://twitter.com/). Twitter’s really handy when you’re on the move, and over the last year, there were dozens of occasions where I really wanted to tweet something, but didn’t have anything except my BlackBerry on hand. Since T-Mobile doesn’t support [Twitter via SMS](http://support.twitter.com/articles/14226-how-to-find-your-twitter-short-code), e-mail is my only option, and I haven’t been able to find a decent service that does what I want it to do. So, obviously, I wrote one this weekend: [Mixamail.com](http://www.mixamail.com/). I’ve kept it as simple as I could. If I send an email to [twitter@mixamail.com](mailto:twitter@mixamail.com), it replies with the latest tweets on my Twitter home page. If I mail it again, it replies with new tweets since the last email. I can update my status by sending a mail with “Update” as the subject. The first line of the body is the status. I can reply to tweets. The tweets contain a “reply” link that opens a new mail and replies to it. I can subscribe to tweets. Sending an email with “subscribe” as the subject sends the day’s tweets back to me every day at the same hour that I subscribed. (I’m keeping it down to daily for the moment, but if I use it enough, may expand it to a higher frequency.) Soon enough, I’ll add re-tweeting and (update: added retweets on 27 Oct) a few other things. I intend keeping this free. Will release the source as well once I document it. [The source code is at Github](https://github.com/sanand0/mixamail). Give it a spin: [Mixamail.com](http://www.mixamail.com/). Let me know how it goes! --- For the technically minded, here are a few more details. I spent last night scouting for a small, nice, domain name using [nxdom](http://www.nxdom.com/). I bought it using [Google Apps](http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html) for $10. The application itself is written in [Python](http://www.python.org/) and hosted on [AppEngine](http://appengine.google.com/). I use the [Twitter API](http://dev.twitter.com/) via [OAuth](http://github.com/Arachnid/AppEngine-OAuth-Library) and store the user state via [Lilcookies](http://github.com/thrivesmart/prayls/blob/master/prayls/lilcookies.py). The HTML is based on [html5boilerplate](http://github.com/paulirish/html5-boilerplate), and has no images. --- ## Comments - **[Jayson](http://www.jaysonjc.com)** _26 Oct 2010 6:41 pm_: Pretty neat work! What was the time taken for this to be done? - **[S Anand](http://www.s-anand.net/)** _26 Oct 2010 6:46 pm_: Let's see... 5 hours on Sunday to get the Twitter API working... 4 hours yesterday to get the user management sorted... about 5 hours today to get the UI done. About 14 hours so far. - **[Aravinda](http://aravindavk.in)** _26 Oct 2010 6:52 pm_: Very nice app :) - **Praveen** _26 Oct 2010 8:03 pm_: Awesome app. - **[pgt](http://posterous?)** _27 Oct 2010 11:25 pm_: have you checked out posterous.com , they do twitter among other things - **Rockey** _27 Oct 2010 11:31 pm_: Tussi Great ho ! - **Amitesh** _2 Nov 2010 7:23 am_: Hey, I am not a techie but this application looks sure value to me. Great work!