I have been curious for some time if it would be possible to get Twitter "mentions" via email.
Twitter does not (yet?) offer this possibility, so I decided to roll my own. You can find the program (and example of how the resultant emails look) here: http://luo.ma/64 But the basic summary of important points: * Text of the Mention is put in the Subject line * Body of the message shows: ** Follower name (both screenname and "real" name" next to Twitter icon ** Following/Friend Count ** Total post count ** The message they are replying to, if applicable (Am I the only one who gets @replies and has NO IDEA what message someone is replying to, only to find out they are apparently "catching up" with Twitter and responding to a really old message?) ** Bio/URL/Location (if available) * Emails are sent in HTML (very minimal and clean, handwritten) but also sends a plain/text alternative with the same information available to those who prefer that (obviously you won't see Twitter icons in that case). * Only uses one API hit each time it is run (see next bullet point) * Requires at least a little knowledge of *nix and access to an account with 'cron' but my guess is that anyone who is developing apps for Twitter can probably manage this quite easily. The script itself is written in bash, with my usual copious notes. (Possible future additions: links to the "mention" and in-reply-to message. However my current use is such that the email will notify me of the message, and if I want to do anything with it, I will fire up my Twitter client.) I hope this is useful to others. In the 24 hours of its existence, it seems to work pretty well, although I'm sure there may be some edge cases I haven't met up with yet. The email formatting has been tested on Gmail and the iPhone, as those are the two ways I access email. It *should* work fine with OS X's Mail app, Outlook, or any client. TjL ps - I might also suggest it as a possible revision for how Twitter might format their own "Direct Message" emails. You'll note that much of the message itself is clearly visible when previewed in Gmail [or other clients with message preview] as opposed to the Twitter Direct Messages, which start out with superfluous information telling me I have a new Direct Message, which I can already tell by the Subject line. But this is a tangential point :-)
