One (arguably) important function of Twitter is the use of “RT”, or “ReTweet”, in your posts. If you’ve read my treatise on how to use Google Reader, you know that I use GReader to keep updated on the Twitter-ers that I think are most important. Read my article for full information, but the short version is to just paste a person’s twitter URL (for instance “http://twitter.com/jjphoto“) into the “Add Subscription” box, and it will take care of itself.
Now, if I read an interesting post and want to retweet it, I have to copy the tweet text in GReader, open a new window, go to twitter.com/home, paste in the text, add “RT” and “@” to the front, and then hit update. I know, that’s not really TOO tedious, but I want it faster.
Google recently added “Send To” links to GReader, which you can enable in your “Settings” page (again, see my previous post on that), and they will easily allow you to post to Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Reddit, etc. The Evernote integration is not there by default, email me if you want to know how it works. However, I want an easy way to retweet a twitter status that I am reading in GReader, so I decided to fix it myself.
If you navigate back to the “Send To” options in the “Settings” page, you’ll see a link that says “Create a Custom Link.” If you click that, you get three fields to fill out. If you use this information, you’re done!
Name: Twitter RT
URL: http://twitter.com/home/?status=RT @${title}
Icon URL: http://jesseandjanie.com/TwitterRT.ico
Now, when you return to GReader, you’ll see a new option under “Send To” – if you choose Twitter RT, it will open a new tab, take you to Twitter, and fill in your status box with all of the information that you need!
It’s not a complicated bit of code, but it works! Do me a favor, if you use my trick, drop me a mention on Twitter, and I’ll see you there!
[...] Creating a Google Reader “Send To Twitter RT” [...]
How do I Twitter my Flickr photos?
There are a couple of options to get that done. You can use a standalone services like SnapTweet, or you can do something that I find really useful. I use a bookmarklet provided by a company called BigTweet. It stays up in my toolbar, and whenever I’m viewing a page that I want to share, I click on it. It opens up a little window, signs into your twitter account, automatically creates a “short URL” (I use bit.ly) for the page you’re viewing, and gives you a field into which you can type your update. That field already has the title of the page, and the shortened URL pasted into it. It’s great!
You could easily use BigTweet to post a link to your Flickr page, along with any other information you’d like to share about it. Here’s an example of what it looks like on Twitter.
Does this help?