Socializing the Network

A while ago I wrote a little app that listened to the BIG-IP for status change notifications and logged them to disk.  I showed this to Robert Scoble and the Channel 9 crew when they visited the F5 headquarters and he asked if he could get those results in his RSS reader.  I answered that by writing the BigipBlogging sample that I submitted to the DevCentral CodeShare

I'm an early adopter in most web based tools so naturally I was a early member on Twitter.  Last year I blogged about an extension to the original program that listened for notification messages and in addition to writing them to disk, the messages could be proxied to my BIG-IP's Twitter acccount.  This has the added benefit of giving me access to a free SMS gateway to allow status messages to go to my cell phone - which is GREAT for a demo BTW!

Fast-Forward to earlier this week... I received an email from Lori asking if I'd ever released the source for the application as she thought this was a great time to do it.  I could have sworn I did but it seems I kept it all to myself as I could not find heads or tails of it anywhere on DevCentral.  I guess since there was no request for it, it slipped by.  Lori said when I posted this in May last year, Twitter was for a niche audience, but now it's mainstream. 

And who am I to say no to my fellow blogger...

So, here you go.  Check out the PerlTwitterProxy sample added to the iControl CodeShare.  Usage is pretty simple if you set it up on your BIG-IP.  If so, then all you have to customize is the Twitter credentials you'd like to use for message posting. 

Oh and Lori, we'll see how many downloads this thing gets and if Twitter has reached mainstream in the networking community.

-Joe

Published Aug 29, 2008
Version 1.0

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