TechnoBot - Joi Ito Wiki

Official Wiki Page for TechnoBot a bot that helps you keep in touch with your cosmos

Joi's Technorati Jabber Alert System and Technorati Cosmos Sidebar Maker

Introduction

This python script will retrieve the technorati cosmos for a URL via the technorati API. It will create a file containing html that can be included in the sidebar of a blog showing a list of recent inbound links via technorati.

The script also keeps a hash table of inbound links and creation dates and will email you and send you a jabber chat message if there are any new inbound links.

This script requires the irclib, jabber, Crypto and technorati python modules

You will need to get an API key from Technorati and include it in a file. See documentation in pytechnorati.

Go to IRC Freenode #technobot to talk about technobot.

JoiIto

Installation

Just install on a machine that has an smtp server and your blog running on it. Call it from cron at a time interval of your choice. I run it every 10 minutes.

Required Modules and Resources

Requires Python. I used 2.2.
Technorati API
pytechnorati

You may need some xml modules such as pyxml

pycrypto (for the hash function)
jabberpy (I am using version 0.4 which is the current version I think)
python irclib

Things to do

Trap errors
Create log file and error log instead of printing messages
Receive commands from Jabber to provide information about blogs

Comments

Version Information

2003-05-29 08:04:52 JST version 0.1 released. Probably buggy, but it sort of works. -- JoiIto
2003-05-29 08:24:03 JST Released version 0.11. Changed search_type to weblogs and diff time from linkcreated to lastupdate in sidebar piece to remove duplicate blogs from sidebar -- JoiIto
2003-05-31 05:26:35 JST version 0.12 released. Removed infinite loops so it can be run from cron. Added "myurl" variable instead of hardwiring URL in code. -- JoiIto
2003-05-31 version 0.121 Was getting false positives and thought it was because the hashlist was too short and dropping hashes of stuff that were still showing up in the results so changed method of handling the hash file to chop the list down to 50 each time. This SEEMS to work. -- JoiIto
2003-06-07 21:03:26 JST version 0.2 now logs into IRC when there is a new inbound link and reports. Changed it to only connect ot jabber and irc when there is a new inbound. Still testing on #joiito (see IrcChannel) but SEEMS to work. -- JoiIto
2003-06-10 12:11:30 JST version 0.21 put sleep before disconnecting from IRC to flush messages before quitting. Seems to have solved bug of missing lines. -- JoiIto

GPL License

GplLicense

Disclaimers, Excuses and Thanks

I wrote this script in the cab, during meetings, on the plane, in the airport and in a variety of random situations.

This is my first python script and is ugly and embarassing.

Thanks to DavidSifry for helping me work out my bugs and for pushing me to release this code now instead of "cleaning it up".

Thanks to Sen for helping me learn python.

Thanks to MarkPilgrim and diveintopython for making learning python easy.