OraTweet Ready for Flight

By Jake • June 2nd, 2009 • 18 Comments

I mentioned a few weeks ago that OraTweet, Noel‘s mirco-blogging package built in APEX, would soon be released to the public after he made some tweaks to get it production-ready.

Today, he unveiled it. You can download OraTweet here.

It’s provided free of charge, as-is, and requires Oracle 10g or 11g and APEX 3.1.x or higher. Oracle XE has not been tested, but Noel says it should work. Matt has confirmed that XE does work, with the addition of a script to load the images into the db.

What do you get?

OraTweet provides you with everything you need to start micro-blogging inside the firewall (or anywhere really). The web front-end is built in APEX, and you can plug in IM/SMS integration. The API allows you to build native and RIA clients (think Adobe AIR) as well. It’s all in there, pretty much everything you’d expect, including the ability to post to Twitter.

Noel also built server-side groups into OraTweet. So, you can create an OraTweet group and anyone following the group will see tweets @ that particular group. We have an @AppsLab group that we all follow, so tweets @AppsLab appear in my timeline. No need to tweet @ each of us individually, which would eat a lot of characters.

This type of grouping is useful if you have a team or a project with many members. Groups are lightweight, easy to create, follow and delete, which helps when you have an ad-hoc project or a unit of work to complete as a team.

Client-side grouping can be built using the API, similar to how clients like TweetDeck allow you to group your tweets.

OraTweet also keeps micro-blogging public. There are no privacy settings to protect your updates. This is by design, since OraTweet grew up as a way to communicate outside email and IM, both of which support peer-to-peer privacy. Noel also didn’t build in direct messaging because it seemed like overkill, since we all have inboxes already.

I’m excited for Noel. His little side-project, started about a year ago, has seen heavy viral adoption inside the firewall. People are uncovering new uses for OraTweet every day.

So, head over to oratweet.com, give a test drive, let us know what you think in comments, including your use cases.


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  • noelportugal

    Thanks Jake for the shout out. I'm intrigued on how and where will OraTweet end up…
    I already see people from some “big” companies downloading the package. I am willing to help them as much as I can to see them succeed. As you well know being 2.0 champions takes some understanding of their community needs. User adoption can be hard when users don't see the potential right away. Only time and content can show the real values of all these tools.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    NP, always a pleasure to report a success story. I'm also very interested to see how adoption and usage goes. OraTweet comes at an interesting time (tipping point, anyone?) for micro-blogging, and I'm sure enterprises are curious to kick the tires.

    Keep us updated with OraTweet's progress. You should blog . . . or maybe that's too many characters :)

  • http://www.matttopper.com topperge

    I can confirm that XE works I've built a couple VMs with it already. The only trick is that you need a script to load the images into the database. I just downloaded the files tonight hopefully I can swing back and write the scripts real quick.

    Congrats Noel for getting this out, looking forward to helping out with the adoption.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Can you share the scripts with us, specifically Noel? I'm sure he can find a home for them on OraTweet, or if not, we can find one somewhere.

  • http://www.matttopper.com topperge

    Nope, I'm keeping it for myself, tough crap. Give me a couple days and I'll get it out there. Going on vacation next week just to catch up on a whole bunch of this stuff.

  • Matt Rasmussen

    Jake, I've got this year's Christmas present picked out for you. You may like it so much you'll get one for the whole AppsLab team. ;) http://site.despair.com/socialmediatee/

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Hahaha, excellent. Thanks.
    I'll add it to my collection to be, including the “wearing my twitter shirt” shirt, the “that's what she twittered” shirt and this classic from 2007
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/saar_cmd/1359590916/.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    I hope you're not going on vacation to work on other stuff (i.e. side projects). Thanks for sharing, we could build a nice little community of awesome around OraTweet, including clients, etc.

    I should get Noel to add a space for community add-ons and such . . .

  • joel garry

    OMG Matt, you've made my day, don't know how I missed that one. This is my favorite, followed closely by the internet is full and green card lawyers.

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