As many are aware, I'm continually working on Ent. To avoid breaking existing functionality, I maintain three separate Ent environments. The core two handle the standard ent @ retroforth.org and askpeek.com addresses. The third is my testbed for new features and experimental tweaks to the core code.

I'd like more testing to be done against the experimental branch, so those willing to help test can use entx @ retroforth.org for this. Any feedback will be appreciated and helps me know what needs tweaking/improving. Suggestions for new services are also welcome.

I'll post here whenever I add new features that need testing.
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@register
Create an Ent user record for your email address

@enable weather <zipcode>
Get weather reports every morning and evening. You need to @register first.

@enable headlines
Get the latest news headlines automatically.

@disable weather
Stop receiving weather updates.

@disable headlines
Stop receiving headlines.

Twitter:

@identify twitter username:password
Record your Twitter login information. Do *after* sending @register

@status
Set your Twitter status. Put the status in the *body* of the email, not the subject line.

@timeline
Get your Twitter timeline

@replies
Get your @ messages from Twitter

@direct
Get the latest 20 direct messages sent to you

Other stuff:

scores [mlb | nhl | nba | nfl]
Get current sports scores

fortune
Get a random quote

bc
BC programming language / calculator. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bc_programming_language
Put code in the *body*, not the subject.

calc [formula]
Calculate the results of formula

synonym word
Get a list of synonyms for a word

@crc - one possible caveat that I found out the hard way with my own Twitter experiment - you can only enter a subject with something like 65 or 66 characters maximum from your Peek (well, you can enter more, but anything else is truncated). To get around this limitation you'll need to delve into the world of multi-part mime decoding which isn't fun/pretty in PHP.

And now the status uses the body of the email, so the subject limitations no longer matter.

Mark - we definitely share the pain of parsing email message body texts with you (esp HTML emails)!

Use @id-tw not @id-tm

Peek HQ will help testing for sure!

I added the BC programming language as an option. This is an "an arbitrary precision calculator language" and is already in use as the backend of the 'calc' tool. For those wanting more power, this provides it.

1) Put the code in the body
2) Subject should be: bc
3) Enjoy

Are you using entx or ent?

Here's something useful:

p=1000;
t=12;
r=6;
i=p*t*r/100;
np=p+i;
print "Principal Amt: ";p;
print "Num Months: ";t;
print "Interest Rate: ";r;
print "----------------\nInterest Amt: ";i;
print "Principal + Interest: ";np

JanaKay: Try it again please. There was a minor backend issue which should now be fully resolved.

Happy happy joy joy! <G>
Got the twitter thing working, now I'll tackle something else! LOL
Actually I was able to get a weather update the other day, and I must say I am totally impressed with the radar map. I'm a bit of a weather junkie, so this is very cool for me!
Thanks and keep up the good work!

I'm with @cgingerich on usernames. Other than that, so far @register, @id-tw, @timeline, and @status have all worked flawlessly for me. Add Facebook support and I'll cut ping.fm loose.

(One thing I do like about their system is the ability to selectively update one service or another.)

Good work, as always!

@timeline now has usernames.

@CRC -- you are a wild and crazy peekster. we talk of you often at peek hq. mostly in awe and reverence.

marudi: no, but I can add that. What do you think proper behavior should be if the status message exceeds 140 characters?

Registered users can now get weather forecasts sent automatically.

1) @register
Only if you haven't done so yet.

2) @enable weather <zipcode>

3) You'll get weather forecasts every morning, around 6am eastern time and every evening around 5pm eastern time.

Current limitations:

1) You have to use a zipcode; city/state pairs don't work yet. (This will be resolved soon)
2) Local radar is not provided yet. This will be added once the base functionality is tested better.
3) You may receive additional weather reports at random times when new functionality is being added.

Twitter status app now checks for length and rejects messages over 140 characters.

@crc - You're the man! :-D

Registration for Twitter has changed:

@identify twitter username:password

(No need to do this if you're already using my Twitter apps; only for new users)

I wonder what would happen if crc teamed up with chris from snapask....

@seanlaf

Thanks so much! Amazon will definitely do the trick.

Is there also a Yelp interface for ent?

"restaurants@retroforth.org"?

Kevin

Dayum, you guys are good! <G>

Seriously....thanks for all these goodies. I know about the challenges of making stuff like this work, and I used to be one of those types, actually.....so I appreciate what goes into the testing, etc.

Thanks from those of us that can reap the benefits w/o the stress!

Yelp is coming. Yelp is coming. Hooray!!!

I cant wait to test that out. ;-)

I'll try to get the help text updated tonight.

Regarding Xtify, that's on hold pending more word from the main Peek developers. I can't test anymore since I had to replace my original peek (hardware issue), and they still haven't setup Xtify on my new one, or provided a way for me to activate Xtify on my own.

Development has been slow lately due to real-life work, health issues, and the resulting lack of time. Having said that, I thought it was time to share a little of what I'm working on.

Over time the Ent codebase has grown in complexity and size. The complexity has resulted in bugs being harder to locate than I'd like, and it's caused some growing pains (e.g., 'news bbc' and 'bc' colliding in the lookup code). To rectify this, I've spent a lot of time in thought and work on designing a new approach. This is finally starting to pay off.

A few highlights:

1) Each service is being moved out of the core code, and provided as a web service
2) I'm using a DSL to simplify writing much of the code for lookups/replies
3) The changes will allow me more options in implementation languages
4) Processing of content can be handled by a different machine, reducing the overall load on my small server

The changes should result in a leaner, faster Ent. Point 1 is fairly significant since I'll be opening my data sources to others. (More details on this will be shared very soon).

I'm also hoping to save enough to get started working on Karere again. (I need a server in a datacenter that allows irc access; these aren't as common [especially when you have a *very* tight budget] as I'd like). Whenever push finally gets restored, I'd love to start using it again.