This post is the first in a series about my experiments with the Twitter API.

I love Twitter; it led to me finding out about a bunch of opportunites, (such as State of Ambition) and in a roundabout way led me to my bootcamp. It has helped me find tons of resources, to meet countless inspiring, encouraging and briliant people, and to keep myself informed on everything from memes to sass to poltical news.

I first used the Twitter API at Founders and Coders, a sixteen week (+ freelancing and teaching) coding bootcamp. Learning what an API was and how to use one was tough. There were many syntax errors, lots of false starts and confusion over terms (“What’s an endpoint?”). Finally getting to grips with AJAX and simple HTTP requests and having tweets about #beiber come sputtering through your command line was amazing (#javascript is too low volume for it not to seem like something is wrong with your code!). Eventually you get comfortable enough with the process to put them onto a webpage. Then you might even format the tweets, with pictures and padding and everything. What a time to be alive!

Twitter is pretty flexible as a source of data, so in theory I’m only constrained by my imagination.

When complete, all of the projects will be listed here as well as available on my site. If you can think of better names for any of these please let me know, it’s definitely not my forte.

Twitter Winddchimes: Twitter here is the ‘wind’; tones will play when your chosen words come up.

Twitter Mosaic: Use your followers avatars to create a picture.

Tweequencer: Turn a tweet into a tune.