Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

microblog-purple is a plugin for Pidgin that works both on Windows and Linux, that supports Twitter, Identica, and Laconica-base server through the conversation windows.

It supports sending @ replies, favorite or retweet with a single click and there is also an character counter telling you how many characters you have left (see the screenshots below).

You will be able to use these commands in the Pidgin Window:

/replies - to get all replies to you
/refresh - get new tweets instantly
/tag, /btag, /untag - automatically tag all your message, good for tagging messages with some hash tag (Example: #election2008)

How to install microblog-purple


For Windows, download this file and skip to 'How to use it' part.

For Linux, you can build it from source:

1. You will need to have libpurple and pidgin headers first. For Ubuntu, these are libpurple-dev and pidgin-dev packages
2. Download microblog-purple source code and untar it somewhere
3. cd microblob-purple-x.x && make && make install
4. The executable will be installed in your pidgin plug-in installation dir, detected from pkg-config command. You can also modify variable and path in global.mak


For Ubuntu Linux, add this repositories:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu hardy main


or

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main


or

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main


of course, depending on your distro. Then open a terminal and type this in order to import the key:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0CF459B8DF37ED8B

And then:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

Update: for Ubuntu Karmic (or if you want to install the latest version), download the source files from HERE.

Then extract the archive, open a terminal and navigate to the folder where you extracted it, and run these commands:
make
sudo make install

That's it, now restart Pidgin.


How to use microblog-purple


First, you need to enable the plugin. Open Pidgin and in Tools > Plugins and check "Twitgin":

pidgin twitter

Then, go to Accounts > Manage Accounts, click "Add" and in the "Protocol" List, select TwitterIM, Identica or Laconica:

pidgin microblogging plugin

You can also configure message refresh rate, in seconds:

pidgin twitter plugin

Here is how it will look:

photobucket



The devs are also working on on Adium port of MBPurple. Hopefully this will be released very soon!