Lisa Kachold wrote:
> Easy Twittering:
>
> In Ubuntu, install curl with |apt-get install curl|, then create a file paste the line below into it, modify the username and password strings:
>
> |curl --basic --user "username:password" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"|
>
>
> Save or copy the file into /usr/bin, and you’re done.
>
>   
> $ /usr/sbin/twit Time to head over to the PLUG Meeting in Tempe
>
> You can also follow updates (name it plugtweet):
>
> !/bin/bash
> while :
>
> do
> curl -s http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.xml | sed -ne '/<text/s<\/*text>//gp'
> sleep 10
> done
> exit
> Next, make this script executable. Then, run it using the command:
>
> ./plugtweet
>   
I use the update.jason method in a few twitter-integrated apps and 
scripts that I wrote (moblogging, etc), it works nicely. There is also a 
text-only twitter client called "ttytter" 
(http://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/) that I use to have one of my 
IRC bots output tweets of people it is following to IRC.