Twitterverse Quartz Composer

LaughingSquid

Part of the Apple Developer Docs example compositions.

Install the Developer Tools and look for:

/Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/XML/The Twitterverse/The Twitterverse.qtz

On Digg: digg.com/apple/Hidden_OS_X_feature_Twitter_integration

On TG Daily: www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-37349-144.html

On LifeHacker: lifehacker.com/389207/twitterverse-screensaver-visualizes...

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Comments

emilychang says:

Weird, I've never seen that either. Does it show tweets coming in live?
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

factoryjoe says:

Well, I'm not sure how often it refreshes -- it's certainly no Twittervision, but you could definitely take it and build something cool that is closer-to-live!
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

John Federico says:

Is there anyway to install it *without* installing the complete developer tools?

-jf.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

draegun says:

These visualizations are cool to look atbut they don't really seem to serve any useful purpose. I look at them once and then never again.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Who cares if they're useful? They're just another way of seeing data -- and sometimes they can actually lead to more useful representations than just straight on tabular views. ;)

@John Federico... someone could probably hack something together to run this as a screensaver. The biggest problem with just packaging up the .qtz file is that you need a way to enter your twitter credentials to download the data, and that requires the Quartz Composer application.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

levifig says:

WOW
I never payed attention to the examples with the SDK...

/me goaz diggin sum moar ^^,
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Original_CyberSkull says:

I was unaware I had this. I must play with it.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

anthrobug says:

Put it into screensavers... Once I enter my username/password to twitter it just blanks out. Doesn't seem to be downloading anything in the background and definitely not displaying anything.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

anthrobug says:

So... I close this window, and behind is Little Snitch asking if it's cool to contact Twitter & s3.amazon... So it works... silly me.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

mikerapin says:

Any chance someone could help explain how to get this working correctly?
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

quecojones says:

It seems to work (I get the spinning vortex-type-thingy and the circle of icons; no tweets though) but, it won't remember my Twitter passwd. :(

Like @mikerapin says, any ideas/suggestions on how to get this to work for reals?
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

mjb_nz says:

Appears like the default settings in the composition don't work, unless you have a password saved for the API data already - not sure where you'd do this to fix it.. Possibly Safari saved passwords - I use firefox.

The other problem is that the base URL used to do the login is incorrect. I'm working on fixing it, but of course Twitter is having issues presently.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

dapengi says:

Im working on using pacifist to install it without having to install all the developer tools.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

kiyanwang says:

I couldn't get it to work either, even in Composer, I enter my user name and password and the screen just goes blank ...
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

borgmarc says:

@drageun : some are useful :D

treepie.sf.net
weshowthemoney.com
weshowthemoney.com/italia

Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Aeoth says:

I've created a similar thing ("TweetSaver") in WPF for Windows :www.aeoth.net/blog/2008/04/20/tweetsaver-wcf- wpf-fun/

It forms part of my Twitter client (MahTweets, codeplex.com/mahtweets/)
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

freshyill says:

No luck here either. Just a black screen, although it does seem to work in Quartz Composer. It opens, that is. Doesn't seem to want to do anything with my username and password.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Robert Dumas says:

Make sure "Use local" is unchecked in "Input Parameters" (or "Options" in the Screensaver Prefpane) or it won't work at all. I now can get my user icon on the screen, but no nebula or updates on the screen.

Try opening the .qtz file in Quartz Composer and open the debug drawer. Is anyone else get the following error?
00:26:30.406 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Failed downloading url "file://localhost/Developer/Examples/Qua rtz%20Composer/Compositions/XML/The%20Twitter verse/?since=Thu%252C+08+May+2008+00%253A26%2 53A30+GMT-0500" with error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1101 UserInfo=0xdd30eb0 "file is directory"
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

snackfight says:

factory joe is the center of my galaxy as well
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

DavidRisley says:

Now that's just cool.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

lgoose says:

is there a way to download this?
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

factoryjoe says:

Sadly no, you need to get the Developer SDK -- otherwise Apple would destroy us into a million bloody corpuscles if anyone dare upload the file to a site like Rapidshare.com, etc.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

AxsDeny says:

Yeah, I just get the black screen too. Perhaps it's because I only have the iPhone SDK installed.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

factoryjoe says:

I also have the iPhone SDK installed and it works fine for me.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Appfrica says:

Nice
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

Bayliss. says:

Leave it running for a while, it'll download your contacts. and it'll work.
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

AxsDeny says:

I left it running overnight. It was a black screen when I went to bed. Eight hours later it was still the same. *shrug*
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

whurley says:

Hey everyone, it's easy to make this a screensaver (not so easy getting it to work correctly). Just put "The Twitterverse.qtz" into:

~/Library/Screen Savers

Then when you open your preferences and select screen savers, look at the bottom under "others" and you'll see "The Twitterverse" as an option.

twitter.com/whurley
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

sean808080 says:

doesn't work for me either. i got it to show just my face [unh!] by unchecking the local option.

www.twitter.com/sean808080
Posted 20 months ago. ( permalink )

trumpetflickr says:

Awesome stuff, looking forward to try it out!
Posted 19 months ago. ( permalink )

AxsDeny says:

Here's the error dump from Quartz Composer:

15:31:42.797 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Downloading xml data from URL "http://AxsDeny:XXXXXXXX@twitter.com"
15:31:42.805 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Downloading xml data from URL "?since=Mon%252C+12+May+2008+15%253A31%2 53A42+GMT-0400 -- file://localhost/Users/axsdeny/Library/Screen %20Savers/"
15:31:42.806 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Failed downloading url "file://localhost/Users/axsdeny/Library/ Screen%20Savers/?since=Mon%252C+12+May+2008+1 5%253A31%253A42+GMT-0400" with error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1101 UserInfo=0x18175b40 "file is directory"
15:32:00.262 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Done parsing XML from URL "http://AxsDeny:XXXXXXXX@twitter.com"
15:32:00.269 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > XML downloaded
15:32:00.270 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Downloading xml data from URL "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeli ne.xml"
15:32:00.277 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Downloading xml data from URL "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml "
15:32:00.482 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Done parsing XML from URL "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeli ne.xml"
15:32:00.508 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > XML downloaded
15:32:00.950 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > Done parsing XML from URL "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml "
15:32:00.962 ["XML Downloader" @ "XML Download"] > XML downloaded
15:32:00.963 ["JavaScript - Image Loader" @ "Friend Images"] > TypeError: Undefined value
15:32:00.963 ["JavaScript - Image Loader" @ "Friend Images"] > Execution failed at time 18.223
15:32:00.964 ["Friend Images" @ "Twitter Data"] > Execution failed at time 18.223
15:32:00.965 ["Twitter Data" @ "Macro Patch"] > Execution failed at time 18.223
15:32:00.986 ["Macro Patch" @ "(null)"] > Execution failed at time 18.223
Posted 19 months ago. ( permalink )

Renaud Joly says:

ouch lost in space ;-)
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

trumpetflickr says:

Unfortunately it seems to be broken, or unreliable, whose fault? Not really sure : (
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

phillipsmn says:

So, did anyone figure out how to make it work? It's still cool and since there's TwitSaver for Windows and no Mac version, it would be great to get this online.
Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink )

benm_at says:

twitocalypse bug?
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )

nicosFR says:

anyone got it working ? I'dlove that but don't have the time to code another one... probably a twitter API update... I got this error:
Failed downloading url "file://localhost/Users/nico/Desktop/The %20Twitterverse/?since=jeu.%252C+16+juil.+200 9+10%253A47%253A39+GMT+0200" with error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1101 UserInfo=0x1d87cd70 "file is directory"
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )

jpritz says:

It has to do with the XML importer Patch in Quartz Composer.

Below is the exact explanation that Apple gives when mousing over the patch in the library inspector . . .

*****Start Explanation*****

XML Importer:
Downloads and parses XML from a specified URL or file path.

The file path is considered absolute if starting with '/', relative to the current user directory if starting with '~', or otherwise relative to the location of the Quartz composition file if available.

The URL must use one of the allowed protocols: file, http or ftp.

The download starts when the "Update Signal" input is set to True. When the download and parsing are finished, the "Done Signal" output is temporarily set to True and the XML is made available as a structure on the "Parsed XML" output.

*****End Explanation*****

My log file when running a test of the twitterverse.qtz composition shows that the XML Importer patch is currently set to local and pointing not to a URL but the directory file://

------ > (Represent the flow of the log file I did this so it didn't look Chinese to some individuals)

*****Start Log*****

===== Log Started on 2009-08-31 09:55:07 -0500 =====

2009-08-31 09:55:08.491 QCPlayer[2561:4c0b] *** Message from :

------ >

Failed downloading url

------ >

"file://localhost/Developer/Library/Qua rtz%20Composer/Examples/Patches/The%20Twitter verse/?since=Mon%252C+31+Aug+2009+09%253A55%2 53A08+GMT-0500"

------ >

with error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1101 UserInfo=0x11414ac30

------ >

"file is directory"

------ >

Underlying Error=(Error Domain=kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Code=-1101 UserInfo=0x114365860 "file is directory")

*****End Log*****

To fix this I believe one will have to go into Xcode and manually update the URL to the correct Twitter API call

(ergo: the URL that Twitter provides in its developer tools so an application such as twitterverse.qtz can use to log with.)
Posted 4 months ago. ( permalink )

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Twitterverse Quartz Composer

Comments

emilychang says:

factoryjoe says:

John Federico says:

draegun says:

factoryjoe says:

levifig says:

Original_CyberSkull says:

anthrobug says:

anthrobug says:

mikerapin says:

quecojones says:

mjb_nz says:

dapengi says:

kiyanwang says:

borgmarc says:

Aeoth says:

freshyill says:

Robert Dumas says:

snackfight says:

DavidRisley says:

lgoose says:

factoryjoe says:

AxsDeny says:

factoryjoe says:

Appfrica says:

Bayliss. says:

AxsDeny says:

whurley says:

sean808080 says:

trumpetflickr says:

AxsDeny says:

Renaud Joly says:

trumpetflickr says:

phillipsmn says:

benm_at says:

nicosFR says:

jpritz says:

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