

Show HN: Remote control your digital life from Twitter - shaharsol
http://ctrltwit.com/

======
wut42
This reminded me directly of some mIRC Scripts. For example, if you had to
change your nick, instead of using the private command `/nick newnick`, the
script will give you a command you can use publicly on the channel, like
`!nick`. So everyone can know _twice_ that you're changing your nick. Also
people who was using theses scripts used to change nicks every time they do
something (eating, sleeping, going to work, ...) — and I always hated that
because it was adding too much useless noise to IRC.

Now... this tool seems quite similar. Controlling your life should happen in
secret - I don't want to know when you want to turn on the bulb in your
toilets, I don't care how much space you have in your dropbox, …. All theses
things are private matter.

Twitter is already full of useless noise, don't add more...

~~~
shaharsol
I kinda hear ya.

However - I always thought of twitter more as a communication protocol rather
then a content app. I think twitter today is indeed already full of noise, and
anyway there's no way to use it for content without curation tools.

~~~
wut42
Yes. Me too (hence the comparision with IRC/mIRC Scripts). However this kind
of communication is just purely personal, I doubt anyone is interested in the
fact that some friend wanted to know how full his dropbox was at some time in
the day. Maybe the _result_ is interesting, but the trigger is not.

But if this works with direct messages, i'm buying it!

(edit: typos)

~~~
shaharsol
I have an example in another comment of how I can buy stock with it:

CTRL @robinhoodapp buy $FB USD100

And then apart from making the transaction I can start convert with my
followers about this deal. What do u think of such scenario?

~~~
mvc
Sure! By all means advertise to the world that you're about to make a trade.
The HFT folks will love that.

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TheTechBox
Seems really interesting but not a huge fan of filling other peoples timelines
with my Tweets controlling things. Or am I missing something?

~~~
shaharsol
There are two options: 1\. if you reply to a tweet, or start a tweet with a
'@', then most of your followers won't see it, unless they follow the replied
to handler. so if i tweet a command to @instagram, only @instagram followers
among my friends will see it, and there aren't many... 2\. there will be cases
where you want to engage a conversation around a command you send. for
example:

CTRL @robinhoodapp buy $FB for USD100

So you buy FB stock AND you get your friends talking about it. Is it a good
buy? a bad move?

~~~
thu
A twitter-based app used to "like" Rihanna pictures on Instagram has also the
credentials to spend huge amount of money ?

------
paukiatwee
Out of topic, your page include logos of other large companies such as
Linkedin, Dropbox, Instagram, is that legal? You can do that while they are
not your customers/clients? Maybe what the logos mean is you can get your
information from those company from your app. My first impression is those
companies are your customers/clients.

~~~
shaharsol
I didn't consult with a lawyer or something... each company and their
"branding" rules for API users and most allow to use the logo under certain
restrictions that to my best understanding I don't break. Dropbox for instance
had to approve the app before I could use the API and I bet they had a look at
the website beforehand.

------
rakoo
Nice, so you use an external service you have no control on to command
external services you have no control on. Great !

------
ar7hur
Nice product, well executed. Reminds me of IMified a few years back.

If you want to build something similar yourself for your own app, it's very
easy with the Wit API [1]

[1] [https://wit.ai](https://wit.ai)

------
pattle
Cool product and congratulations on launching. I kind of had a similar idea
but never got round to building it.

What would put me off is the fact that I'd be cluttering up the feeds of those
that follow me with things that should be done in private. Surely it would
work better with DM's rather than public tweets?

Also I'm not sure how practical / time saving this will be. For example liking
a photo on instagram using CtrlTwit doesn't really save me any time/hassle
than just going straight to instagram.

However like I said it is pretty cool and I'll give it a try. You're
presentation is great too.

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fudged71
Reminds me of Hubot [http://hubot.github.com/](http://hubot.github.com/)

I suppose you could also use twitter DMs for notifications from services.

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K0nserv
I built something more general months ago[0], but I found that using twitter
to send commands adds a fair bit of overhead and noise to your twitter stream
which is annoying.

It's a novel idea and the I see the appeal, but keeping down the clutter in
the twitter stream is a key issue imo.

[https://github.com/k0nserv/twicmd](https://github.com/k0nserv/twicmd)

------
belze_72
I believe there was a similar product that did pretty much the same thing 3-4
years ago. Would anyone recall? What happened to them? I don't know if I would
like controlling my personal stuff in a public environment.

~~~
thu
Maybe IFTTT can react to specific tweets.

~~~
shaharsol
I bet they can, but then you'll need a separate recipe for each different
command, and as a user you'll need to enable each command before you can use
it. This way you just start by tweeting and it just works (after 1st oauth
process that is, that is initiated as a reply to your tweet)

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philipp-spiess
It's a good idea but it's easier to click the link and do the action manually
instead of typing the text and click reply. So there is absolutely no gain for
me in using your product.

~~~
shaharsol
fair enough. i know it's for the keyboard savvy type.

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jdotjdot
Hey guys, I like your landing page a lot--what framework did you use for it?
It looks like you used something out-of-the-box, not necessarily from scratch.

~~~
shaharsol
its from themeforest. pick your landing page here:
[http://themeforest.net/category/marketing/landing-
pages](http://themeforest.net/category/marketing/landing-pages) (and then
modify a little...)

------
jarnix
Sorry but I don't see the use of relying on Twitter for requesting other APIs
!

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EnderC
This just seems like a good way to annoy your followers.

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pmcpinto
Interesting product

~~~
shaharsol
Thx! I hope it can appeal to non-hackers as well as it involves typing
commands, much like CLI IMO.

