Twitcaps is most easily described as Real-Time Image Search Engine / Browser. Twitcaps allows you to search, browse and capture the latest images posted to Twitter via any of the popular Twitter image services (Twitpic, yFrog, Twitgoo, etc). From the Twitcaps interface, you may capture an image for later use, re-tweet the image on your own Twitter feed, or share the image on any number of social linking services.

Real-time Image Search / Browsing in this case refers to the ability of Twitcaps to deliver you the absolute latest search results returned by the Twitter Search API. Sometimes there is a delay in the amount of time it takes for Twitter's search to index new tweets and therefore Twitcaps is only as "real-time" as Twitter Search will allow.

If you would like to see new images as they are received, simply go to the homepage (http://twitcaps.com) and click the "Real-Time!" button at the top. This will attempt to keep up with images as they are indexed by Twitcaps. If you would like a more user-friendly (but not-quite real-time) speed, click the "Slow Your Roll" button. Note that the image stream will automatically pause when you interact with any of the images in the stream and resume when the mouse is not interacting with the stream.

Current list:

This list is always being updated. It is a trivial matter to add support for new image services to Twitcaps as we do not need to deploy new code in order to do so. If you are a developer of a new Twitter image service, or you are a user and would like Twitcaps to support a new service, please email twitcaps.developer@gmail.com with your request.

While browsing images on Twitcaps, you can click on any picture to receive a full-sized view of that image. In the upper left corner of the full-view, you'll see a button labelled "Capture this pic". When you click this button, the image is "Captured" in the sense that a permanent copy is made of the image and uploaded as a new image to the Twitpic service (stored under YOUR Twitter account). You can browse all of the images you have captured on Twitcaps by clicking the "My Captures" button on the main toolbar. You must login to Twitcaps using your Twitter account in order to view your captured images.

When you capture an image, a permanent copy of the original is made and stored under your Twitter account at Twitpic.com. This means that if the user who originally posted their image should later decide to delete that image, then you will STILL have your copy of that image available to your Twitter account on both Twitcaps and Twitpic.com. This way, you can feel safe in re-tweeting the image or posting the image to any number of social linking services. Because you now control the image, you can be confident that the image will not disappear and the link to that image will never go away (until you delete it from Twitpic.com).

Although you can delete the images you have captured from Twitcaps on the "My Captures" screen, you cannot currently delete the image from Twitpic.com. You will need to login to Twitpic.com with your Twitter account and manually delete the source image. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the Twitpic API, and as soon as they implement image deletion functionality, we will integrate this into Twitcaps.

Click the "Newest Images" button to see the newest images posted to Twitter. If you are already on this screen, you can refresh the browser window to get the newest pictures. Twitcaps polls Twitter in 10 second intervals. Occasionally, the Twitter search API will not return anything new for 20 - 30 seconds.

You may view images that are "Most Popular". This sorts the images in order of the number of times they've been re-tweeted. Currently, Twitcaps is indexing images over a 24 hour period, though I would expect this to change as we build out our infrastructure.

For both Newest Images and Most Popular views, Twitcaps allows the user to filter out by either Image Host or Language. For example, you could apply a filter to view only photos originating from Flic.kr or you could view only the photos originally posted in Spanish language tweets.

The search input accepts any valid search string using the Twitter search operators.

Example searches:

twitter search containing both "twitter" and "search". This is the default operator.

"happy hour" containing the exact phrase "happy hour".

love OR hate containing either "love" or "hate" (or both).

#haiku containing the hashtag "haiku".

from:alexiskold sent from person "alexiskold".

to:techcrunch sent to person "techcrunch".

@mashable referencing person "mashable".

Sometimes there is beauty not just in the individual images, but in the collage as a whole. A MetaCap is a way to capture all of the images you are currently viewing on Twitcaps. It is, essentially, a screenshot. If you are logged in, all of your MetaCaps will be saved to your account. If you are anonymous, all MetaCaps are viewable at http://twitpic.com/photos/twitcapsbot.

In either case, the MetaCap will enter the image stream after it has been generated, and you may intercept it there for retweeting should you desire.

Yes, there are two ways! The easiest method is to login to Twitcaps with your Twitter username and password. Then, select "Friend Caps" from the drop-down menu labeled "My Profile"

If you would rather not login to Twitcaps, you can just perform a search in the form of from:username where username is the Twitter ID of the person whose pictures you wish to view.

Yes! You must first login to Twitcaps with your Twitter username and password. Then, select "Filters" from the drop-down menu labeled "My Profile". Here you will be able to type in the name of a Twitter user and add it to your list of filters. Thereafter, while browsing Twitcaps in any view mode, you will no longer see the images that originate from or have been retweeted back to the user you've filtered.

Yes!

Latest Images RSS - http://twitcaps.com/feed

Popular Images RSS - http://twitcaps.com/popular/feed

Additionally, you can access an RSS feed with any filters you have applied to your Twitter account by adding your Twitter username to the RSS url:

Filtered Latest Feed - http://twitcaps.com/feed/YourUsername

Filtered Popular Feed - http://twitcaps.com/popular/feed/YourUsername

Yes! You must first login to Twitcaps with your Twitter username and password. Then, select "Settings" from the drop-down menu labeled "My Profile". Here you will be able to configure the number of images you will see per page. Note that there is a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 120. 40 seems to be a good default, depending on your screen resolution.

Probably not. There are two far more likely explanations for broken image links, the first being that the user who initially tweeted the image had a change of heart and quickly removed the image from their hosting service. The second possibility is that the image hosting provider itself (Twitpic, yFrog, Twitgoo) is having service issues on their end. Twitpic in particular is experiencing a period of rapid, exponential growth and suffers occasional (and understandable) outages as they continue to improve the robustness of their servers.

Twitcaps is currently in an Open Beta testing phase. This means that you are free to use the site, but Twitcaps.com offers no guarantees of uninterrupted service or persistence of user data. Until we've officially launched, the need may arise to wipe the user database. In the event of such a wipe, any images you "Capture" will remain at Twitpic.com, but you may lose your records of those images at Twitcaps.

The current, base functionality of Twitcaps will carry us through the Beta to Release 1.0. There will surely be much work to clean-up and improve the interface during that time. Still, I'm already hard at work on some exciting new features, including:

• Real-Time AJAX updates. Sit back and watch the images stream into view. Implemented v0.8b
• Full-screen, passive slide-show mode
• Capture Categories - organize your Caps any way you like
• Custom slideshows - view your caps in slideshow mode, based on your categories

I'd love to hear any feature requests you're willing to share. I have big plans for Twitcaps and because I'm currently a team of one, I'm sometimes able to turn-around major functionality additions quickly. Nothing is too big or too crazy at this point. Please send your suggestions to twitcaps.developer@gmail.com

Twitcaps is designed, developed, and administered by one person. To correspond with the developer, please email: twitcaps.developer@gmail.com

Twitcaps is built in Groovy and Java using the Grails web application framework. I owe a debt of thanks to both the Grails and Groovy communities for providing such wonderfully useful (and fun!) tools and for being so active in supporting those who use them. Every time I encountered a technical hurdle, chances were good that a) somebody else had already solved it and b) they wrote about it in extensive detail.

Twitcaps also employs the following technologies, plugins, services, etc, for which I would like the thank the respective developers:

• java-twitter - For the easily extensible Twitter wrapper (love that Decorator pattern)
• WhatTheTrend.com - for the Trend descriptions and API
• Grails Quartz Plugin - job scheduling
• Grails Feeds Plugin - RSS magic
• All of the image hosting services supported by Twitcaps - for the functional, sane and remarkably consistent APIs they provide, and most of all for their generous bandwidth allowing us to traffick in real-time imagery.
• and, of course, the amazing Twitter API that makes our whole real-time world possible.

I would also like to thank the many individuals who have provided feedback, bug reports, and generally, great suggestions that have significantly contributed to the overall user experience of Twitcaps. Several individuals in particular have gone "above-and-beyond" in acting as something of an unpaid Twitcaps QA department:

• SebastienG - Always the first to let me know when I've broken something, and an endless source of great usability suggestions.
  
• tweeterjp - Discovered the double-byte character problem for Twitcaps searches which allowed us to properly support Japanese charaters. My un-official localization tester =)
• Ben - For inspiring me with conversations about the "meaning" of Twitter.
• Sasha - For being my sounding board for new ideas and for pushing me to explain extremely technical challenges in layman's terms, casting an odd, new illumination upon even the gnarliest concurrency issues.