The Tarpipe Workflow

The following image shows the workflow as it appears at Tarpipe but this is what’s happening.

I send the email with image attachment from my phone (or whatever) to the Workflow’s secret email address. Tarpipe receives it and then sends the image to Flickr tagged with “Phonepic” and uses the body of the email as the picture description. Tarpipe also sends the image to Twitpic and the Twitpic URL is added to the body of the email which is then tweeted on Twitter Account 1. The body of the email is then sent to a Text Formatter connector and the output of that, the description followed by the TwitPic URL is sent to the Mailer Connector. The Mailer then emails its output to my TwitterMail secret email address where it’s then tweeted to Twitter Acc 2, a replica of the tweet sent to Account 1.

Confused. I bet you are! Anyway, here’s the Workflow in all its glory. Click to see it full size.

Modern technology, bloody marvellous!

This morning I wanted to find a way of updating two separate Twitter accounts with the same tweet. I like a bit of work/play separation but sometimes the same tweet is appropriate to both accounts. This is how I did it.

TarPipe

I wrote a blog entry last week all about Tarpipe. It’s a way to create publishing workflows that can be triggered by e-mail messages, instant messaging updates and third-party applications. I currently use PSI to send a status update to Tarpipe which in turn updates a few social networking sites, including Twitter.

So. I wondered if I could set up a second Twitter account at Tarpipe and then have the PSI message update that at the same time. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to set up a second account but realised that I could have Tarpipe email the update somewhere. So if I could find a place that lets you tweet via email, I could have solution!

TwitterMail

Enter TwitterMail. They say, about themselves: When you give us your Twitter credentials we supply you with a TwitterMail email address. For instance abcdef1234 @ twittermail. com. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.com. Nice. Sounds just the job to me. One account set up quick as a flash.

The Tarpipe Workflow

So I toddled off to Tarpipe, set up a REST Decoder Workflow to update one Twitter account (as well as Plurk and Rejaw) and then email the same update to TwitterMail using the Tarpipe Text Input connector to provide the email address at TwitterMail.

Whoooa I can hear you thinking “What!” Well a picture is worth a thousand words so here’s a screen shot of the new workflow, I masked the email address a bit for, well you know:

Knock me down with a feather it works too! You could set up more than two accounts at TwitterMail (if it’s OK with them) and have Tarpipe email each supplied address.

Matt

On my Googling search I did actually discover Matt which is a web based service that can do the same thing. The drawback for me is that you have to login to their site to do the update. With my method you just open up a Jabber IM window, type and boom it’s gone. It’s swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Workflows

Tarpipe uses configured workflows in a way very similar to Yahoo Pipes. You construct your workflow by joining the connectors on a canvas, connecting the output of one connector to the input of another etc. The easiest way to explain it all is to show a screen-grab of one of my workflows. This image shows my way of sending Camera Phone images to TwitPic and Flickr.

What’s happening here is that my phone emails the picture to tarpipe, it’s then sent to Flickr and Twitpic. The body of the email gets used as the Flickr title and the image is tagged with Phonepic. The Twitpic URL is sent to Twitter together with the body of the email and they both then become a Tweet. El neato.

Supported Services

Tarpipe currently supports 20+ services with more planned. Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Evernote, Plurk, Friendfeed, Delicious are amongst the ones currently available.

I like it!