Just got another web toy — Mechanical Plurk — up and running today, after a couple of false starts yesterday. The idea for this was first posited by Jason two weeks ago, as an experiment using the Mechanize Ruby gem to automate posting on Plurk. Because Plurk still doesn’t have a web service, you’re pretty much reduced to scripting browser-actions to enter text and submit forms. It’s a bit low-rent, but at least it works. I’m particularly proud of the double entendre name for this product; it’s a play on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, and the fact that we’re using Mechanize to machine-post on Plurk.
If anyone’s wondering why we bothered to build something like this when there are sites like Ping.fm that can do the same thing, it’s mostly because I want to be able to use the interfaces that I like (e.g., Twitteriffic or SMS), and not have to contend with another site’s controls. Mechanical Plurk is an agnostic solution, so to speak, because it doesn’t force you to change your behaviour. You sign up once, and never have to go back to the site again.
[ UPDATE: That's the theory anyway. At the moment, we've been having trouble getting MechanicalPlurk to operate consistently for more than a few hours at a time. This is rather quickly becoming an object lesson in why you usually wait for a proper API before doing this sort of thing. ]