Hey! This is the old a broken mold. Newer stuff is at abrokenmold.net.
That being said, feel free to rummage through the archives over here. Also feel free to leave comments; we're still keeping an eye on this.

I've recently started using Gnome Do in Ubuntu 9.04, and I've not yet explored the extent of its functionality, but I'm continually discovering more uses. It includes plugins for GMail contacts, Firefox bookmarks, a Gnome dictionary and calculator, Pidgin messenger, Imageshack uploader, and more. One useful plugin is the Microblogging (Twitter) plugin; it shows your friends' status updates in the notification tray, and you can post directly from Do. You can even manage your Gnome session and windows, and control your media player. Oh, and all this is just an extension of the main function, which is a search/launcher; however, I have yet to put it to use as effectively as Launchy. Finally, you can use it with a dock skin, wrapping yet another desktop function into one tool.

A few configuration options are available by right-clicking on the Do icon in the dock, but to further customize dock settings, you can use Alt+F2 > gconf-editor > Apps > gnome-do > preferences > Docky > Utilities > DockPreferences. Icons are added or removed by dragging to the dock. Screenshot here.

Now the Twitter plugin would be really handy, except for the fact that it, along with most third-party Twitter apps, was broken to some extent by the Twitpocalypse. Although the crisis was mostly averted, it left in its wake a bunch of mal-tweeting apps. In the case of Do, upon an attempted post to Twitter, you would receive a notification that the post had failed, when it had in fact succeeded. While not exactly an epic fail, it nonetheless was an undesirable state of affairs. Enter open source developers.

The bug was reported and dealt with on Launchpad here. However, finding all the dev language a bit difficult to follow, I headed over to the Ubuntu forums for some clarification, where a user linked to the same fix page, but with a more lucid explanation.

Go to Synaptic, go to Software Sources, pre-released updates, close, look for gnome-do, update gnome-do plugins, go to .local/share/gnome-do and delete (or move) your plugins directory, open gnome-do, enable the microblogging plugin again, and you should be good to go.
So, to further expound ... you open Synaptic package manager, then open Software Sources and enable pre-released updates (instructions). Then go back to Synaptic and search for gnome-do-plugins, and update the package. Next, open a file browser, and show hidden files if they are not already visible (View > Show Hidden Files), then navigate to your home folder, where you should find the above-referenced location; delete or move. Finally, simply open Gnome Do and re-enable your plugins.

Viola! You should now have tweets that flow like clockwork.

2 comments:

Nathaniel said...

Nice work. Two technical things with the post: I believe 'broken to some extend' should be 'broken to some extent'.

And you have fallen for the copy link from Google trick. I don't know exactly why or how it happens, but if you copy a link from a Google search, you may get a link on the Google domain instead of the straight address. See the first two links in your post for proof.

Matthew said...

Thanks. I was in a hurry and running on little sleep; I just clicked through the links to make sure they worked. And I fixed a couple grammatical issues, but missed that one.