open.iphonedev.com

Now there is this guy Tim Haines who had the smart idea to put up a spreadsheet on Google Documents and link this with an online form where people could add themselves. Everybody who develops for the iPhone is invided to leave his mark. By adding your name and apps you will get an entry in this Google spreadsheet.

You could go through the list and follow 900 people manually on twitter, or – much quicker – fire up a ruby script written by David Clements to do that automatically.

*Update*

HOW TO – Dr Touch was kind enough to provide a step by step how-to for us ruby newbs!

Mac users are lucky because their Mac comes with a fully fledged Ruby system. There where some bumps, but nothing a little RTFM could not fix.

First make sure that your Ruby system is fresh.

sudo gem update –system
sudo gem update

Install the Google Spreadsheet Gem as shown in the Read Me.

sudo gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
sudo gem install gimite-google-spreadsheet-ruby

Install Twitter Gem 0.4.1, because the newer versions don’t work with the script. Otherwise you get something about invalid arguments at line 22.

sudo gem install twitter -v 0.4.1

Modify the script to use the 0.4.1 twitter gem instead of the newest one. You can omit this step if you haven’t installed a newer twitter gem.

require “rubygems”
require “google_spreadsheet”
gem ‘twitter’,'=0.4.1′     # inserted to force specific version
require ‘twitter’

Execute the script.

ruby iphone-dev-tweeters.rb

** UPDATE to the UPDATE **

If you are impatient like me and decided to go ahead on your own and try to get this script running without the fore mentioned tutorial than you probably went ahead and installed ruby via macports. I had no idea that OS X came with a full blown version of Ruby already installed. Apparently when I installed the latest version I hosed something with my Paths and the old ruby install was being called first and was causing all sorts of unpleasntness!

So, Deep Breath, I exercised my Google muscles and after about an hour of searching I came up with the solution . . .
(from HERE)

Open Terminal and type:

touch .bash_profile
open .bash_profile

This will pop open a TextEdit window. Add the following two lines to the end of the file and save it (it may be empty to start with):

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH

Now go back to Terminal and type:

source .bash_profile

What have you just done? MacPorts has created an /opt/local folder under which it will install any software you ask it to. The lines you added to your .bash_profile file ensure that when you run something like ruby in the Terminal, your shell can find the MacPorts installed version, and, importantly, find it before the regular OS X one.

This is an excellent utility for app developers, Thank You for making it free

Features:

- Rankings are now saved (optional)
- Export to CSV of ranking history
- AppIDs are now saved
- Expanded instructions