Dabr, Dabr, Everywhere...

I contribute code to Dabr - a mobile twitter client. It's a great project to keep my hand in the world of PHP, APIs, SVN, and all the other tools that are essential to the modern online world.

Dabr's strength for developers is two-fold

1. Dead easy to install. Unzip the files, fill in your API key(s), upload, done.
2. It's under an incredibly permissive Open Source MIT License. Essentially anyone can do anything with the code and they don't need to ask permission, nor contribute anything back to the code base.

It's a really popular tool. Although it's hard to count how many users are on the main Dabr server - not to mention all the clones - it's obvious that many people find it an indispensable way to access Twitter.

According to the New York Times, Rafinha Bastos is the most influential person on Twitter. Guess what client he uses? So, with a kick-arse product and no silly "Intellectual Property" restrictions, we have let a thousand flowers bloom. There are clients deployed all over the world. Including on my secure server - SSL Dabr. And here's one more...

Welcome UberSocial!

The most recent flower is UberSocial. As well as having the most popular BlackBerry Twitter client, and an iPhone client - they've now beta-launched a mobile web client - based on Dabr!

I'm really excited to see Dabr spreading far and wide. The intention - for me - has never been to make pots of money from it. The adverts on SSL Dabr just about cover the hosting costs.

What I like seeing is my code being used far and wide - and helping people. I know it's corny, but seeing my code being used by Twitter users in Egypt during the uprising was overwhelming. In a tiny, almost insignificant way, I helped.

I don't think my coding is good enough to get something into a really important project - like the Linux Kernel, or the International Space Station - but seeing millions of users is personally edifying.

So, long live Open Source and long live Dabr!