Using @IFTTT to create a Twitter stream for @EvolDir

Since 2009 I've been running a service that takes posts to the EvolDir mailing list and sends them to a Twitter stream at @EvolDir. This service was running on a local machine which has died. Rather than wait until I rebuild that server (again), I looked around for other ways to recreate this service. I decided to use IFTTT ("if this then that"), which is a wonderful way to chain together web services.

IFTTT uses "recipes" to chain together two services (if something happens here, do this). For example, given a RSS feed of recent messages to EvolDir, I can create a recipe to send the links to those posts to Twitter:

Great, only EvolDir is an old-fashioned mailing list distributed by email only. There is no web site for the list that has URLs to each post, and no RSS feed. IFTTT to the rescue again. I created a recipe that reads emails for a GMail account that is subscribed to EvolDir, and each time it gets an email from EvolDir it sends the contents of the email to a blog on Tumblr:

Now each post has a web presence, and Tumblr generates a RSS feed for the blog, so the first recipe can take that feed and every time the feed is updated it will send that post to Twitter. Simples.

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Mapping evolutionary biology: @evoldir and #ProjectEvoMap

Robert M. Griffin (@GriffinEvo) has launched ProjectEvoMap. Rob explains:

I have decided this week to try to create a resource where evolutionary
biologists can find info on labs and groups from all around the world. I
have created a collaborative Google map online which evolutionary biology
research groups can pin their labs to with a brief description of their
interests. Others can then browse the map to look for labs in specific
areas – for example, if someone wants to find suitable labs in their
current country for work they can see all the labs in that area, likewise
anyone looking for work in a specific region or who needs access to labs
while on fieldwork can look for nearby groups which may be able to help.

Below is a screen shot of part of the map. If you're working on evolutionary biology now is your chance to literally put your lab on the map.


In parallel I'm experimenting with adding a map to the venerable EvolDir mailing list, for which I run a twitter stream (@evoldir). Using some terribly crude code to extract what looks like an address from EvolDir posts, then calling Google's Geocoding API results in a map of recent posts. You can see the live map at http://bioguid.info/services/evoldir/. This service compliments Rob's by giving a sense of current activity in the community (e.g., conferences, courses, jobs).

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Darwin on Twitter

Well, not Darwin himself, exactly. The Evolution Directory (better known as "EvolDir") is a mailing list run by Brian Golding at McMaster University, Ontario. It's widely used by evolutionary biologists to post announcements about jobs, courses, conferences, software, and other topics of interest to the community.

In this age of spam- and administrivia-clogged inboxes I find it hard to keep track of emails (and routinely ignore most), so it occurred to me that I'd pay more attention to EvolDir if the announcements were made over twitter. Hence, I wrote a script to monitor my email account for EvolDir emails, and post any announcements to twitter. You can follow EvolDir by going to http://twitter.com/evoldir.

One complication was working out a URL for individual EvolDir emails. To make my life simpler I created a simple web archive of each individual email. As a by product of this there is now an RSS feed for EvolDir, available from http://bioguid.info/services/evoldir/, if RSS is your preferred means of consuming news. I've added the EvolDir RSS feed to the Systematic Biology web site, so that visitors to that site can see the latests announcements from the evolutionary biology community.

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