In August this year Twitter changed the way you can add statuses to your timeline by using an external script. If you would like to use your own PHP script (for instance) to update your timeline (or to let users update their own timeline) you have to use the OAuth protocol to do so. OAuth is an authentication protocol that allows users to approve application to act on their behalf without sharing their password.

Less known is a feature of the Twitter API that gives only access to yourself to update your own timeline. This is called the “single outh token” method. You can use it to update your timeline everytime you add a new article to your blog. But, did you know it’s quite easy to add your geo-location to your post as well? It’s quite easy to pass on the latitude and longitude together with your status update. You would get something like this:

You will have to register a Twitter application on the Twitter Development Site but that’s quite easy and well documented. You can login here using your normal Twitter account. After having done so you can download the Twitter OAuth Class from Abraham Williams (@abraham). This PHP class does all the work for you. All you have to do is feed it with the information you want in your status update (remember the maximum of 140 characters)

Here’s the code you can use.