How to use Twitter as an SMS event notification system for File sharing and priority email notifications

**This feature is now deprecated

One of the benefits of Twitter it it’s ability to generate events on messages and even more it’s ability to tie this to push, email and especially SMS notifications. In many ways you can craft solutions to use it as an SMS Gateway, and indeed there are a few innovative solutions that do just this.

We have implemented such a solution for event notifications with the SME Open Cloud File Server which unifies files from over 35 different public Storage Clouds and private on-premise files, whilst also providing security and audit services. In this post I’m going to step you through how the SME Twitter integration works.

All accounts, including the free accounts have the ability to use Twitter as an event notification for file share or file event notifications. The first step to using Twitter as an event notification system is to sign up for a Twitter Account and then integrate it with your SME Account. To integrate with SMEStorage take the following steps:

1. After login go to App integrations from the right sidebar.

2. Choose to sign in with Twitter using OAuth in which you enable interaction with your Twitter account without exposing your password:

3. Enter your Twitter username and password when Twitter pops the authenticate and allow access page.

4. Once this is done you will be returned to the SME site and you can choose how you wish to use Twitter with Storage Made Easy:

You can choose to use Twitter to share files and also for notifications.

Now before we show you how to use Twitter with Storage Made Easy, if you want to receive Twitter push notifications to your phone or messages as SMS, you need to map your cell phone to Twitter. To do this you need to login to you Twitter account and then click on the link that enables you to setup Twitter with our mobile phone:

This will take you to a page where you can enter your cell number and setup Twitter to work with your cell / mobile.

Once this is done you are all set, now we can explore how you can take advantage of the Twitter integration with Storage Made Easy:

The first way is that you can share file links directly on you Twitter account (be sure not to share copyrighted files as complaints can lead to account closure). You can do this from the website or client / mobile tools:

Now that Twitter is setup you will also receive notifications if a user shares a file with you from a business workspace or from a shared business folder. This gets sent as a Twitter direct message and therefore generates an SMS to your mobile device.

The other cool Twitter integration that Storage Made Easy provides is the ability to configure an email address which can be used to accept emails from nominated addresses. (to get access to this feature you have to add Twitter Notifications for emails from Cloud Apps after login to the SME website).

When those emails are received to the email configured from the nominated senders a Twitter Direct Message email is sent to the Twitter Account you integrated with SME. This DM contains who the email was from, and the subject line, and of course if you have Twitter setup with your cellphone as described above you will also get a realtime SMS alert when this is triggered.

What is this good for ? Well for file sharing, you get instantaneous notifications delivered over SMS. Also, if you have inbound emails that you want absolutely instant SMS notifications from then this works a treat as almost instantaneously as the email comes in you will get an SMS notification letting you know, so it is great for systems or Apps that generate real-time email alerts but have no SMS capability. Alternatively perhaps you configured the email to be a CC on some urgent email you want to receive. The possibilities for use are endless.

Storage Made Easy can also offer business customers of our Cloud File Server integrations with other SMS Gateways such as Twilio, Clikatell and BulkSMS.

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Twitter Authentication updated for file sharing

We have recently made some enhancements to our site and service and one of those was to change the way that we authenticate with Twitter for file sharing and for enabling users to receive direct messages if someone shares a file with them.

Twitter recently announced that they are turning off basic Twitter authentication and that all sites that integrate with Twitter need to use OAuth authentication.
This means that you will need to re-authenticate to use your Twitter account with SMEStorage.
To do this:
1. Log into your SMEStorage Account
2. Choose ‘App Integrations’
3. Choose to sign in with Twitter
4. Authenticate with Twitter and grant access to SMEStorage
5. Choose whether to share file links and received direct messages for files shared
6. Click ‘Save’

That’s it !

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Multi Cloud Storage API Updated

We have just update our multi-cloud API manual and published it on Google Code. We also have added some more code examples in PHP to supplement those in .Net, and added a PERL libaray example with a test PERL app as well.

The multi-cloud API now supports Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files, Box.net, MobileME, Gmail, Any Email, FTP, Google Docs, Evernote, and any WebDav enabled cloud. Coming soon will be Microsoft SkyDrive, Twitter, Deicious, and Walrus from Eucalyptus.

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SME announces the Organisation Cloud File Server

Today we released our Organisational Cloud Package. This is specifically for businesses who want to take advantage of Cloud Storage.  The Organisational Cloud package supports Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Box.net, Email-as-a-Cloud, Private Cloud, and GMail-as-a-Cloud.

Specific features are:

– Mix and Match Cloud Providers and view all your files from all providers in one File System



– Use one or more Cloud Providers between as many users as you prefer. We offer 5 and 10 user packages but ask us if you want more than this.

– Administrator can invite and manage users, decide which clouds are used, is responsible for public organisation folders, and can monitor logs.

      

– Use your preferred client – Web, Firefox plug-in, Windows Virtual Drive (with explorer, shell and sync tools), iGoogle, iPhone

– Easily Backup or import from different Cloud Providers, which also includes Google Docs and Evernote.

– Integration with Microsoft Office and Open Office

– All Backups can be scheduled to happen in real-time or offline at a specific time each hour,day,week or month.

– Support automated emails backup using POP3 or IMAP with plug-ins available for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.

Encrypt your files at any time using SHA-1 secure encryption. Only you have the private key so your files can be absolutely secure.

– Incorporate your own Private Organisation Cloud using a simple FTP Server. This can be used to access files in the virtual file system or even backup from private to public cloud or vice-versa.

– Web platform offers integrations with Zoho Office (create documents directly in the cloud), Evernote, Google Docs, Picnik (inline image editing), ScribD (view PDF’s and other documents), and Twitter (file share using Twitter or be notified of users sharing files with you)

– Rich Collaboration, document workflow and file sharing features.

– Ability to edit HTML, PHP, C++, Ruby, Python, .Net, JavaScript and other languages inline using built in code editor in the web platform.



Sophisticated Filter mechanisms to deal with large volume of files

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Twitter File link sending added to SME

You will notice a new option when you click on a file in the SMEStorage web platform. This is the option to send a file link with comments to Twitter.


To enable this There is a new option underneath the “My Account” link on the sidebar call “Integrations”. You can enter your Twitter account details here. Once you have done this you can use Twitter also to be notified by direct message of any files shared to you from business group shares workspaces that you have setup.



twitmessage


This of course supports all the underlying file storage providers that we support which include Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Gmail as a cloud, Email as a Cloud, FTP as a Private Cloud, and Box.net, and of course a mixture of these.

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