NAME

comment_myspace - Leave a comment for your Myspace friends

VERSION

Version 0.03

SYNOPSIS

usage: comment_myspace ( -m message | -f filename ) [-y] [-d] [-i] [-r]
    [-n max_count] [-u username -p password] [-c cache_file]
    [friendID ...]

Simple script to leave a comment for each of our friends using the WWW::Myspace::Comment Perl module. By default, it will leave a maximum of 50 comments (see the -n option below), then exit displaying a message containing the result code returned from the post_comments method (DONE, COUNTER, or CAPTCHA). "perldoc WWW::Myspace::Comment" for more info.

-m message

Post "message" to the friends' page (beware shell escapes!)

-f filename

Read the account, password, and message from filename. The file must contain the username on the first line, the password on the second line, and the message starting on the third line, like this:

joe@somewhere.com
ILike2havelongpasswords
Just stopping by to say hi!

- Joe

The above will set username to "joe@somewhere.com", the password to "ILike2havelongpasswords", and the message to:

Just stopping by to say hi!

- Joe

All characters are safe when passing comments this way, and you can also pass HTML in the message. Note that myspace does allow users to strip HTML from comments, so make sure your stripped message is still readable.

-y

Yes mode: Don't ask for confirmation, just do it. (careful!!!) This is for cron jobs, but normally you should use the confirmation to make sure the shell hasn't munged your message and that the friend count and exclusion count look ok before you go send stuff you didn't want to people you didn't want to...

-d

Inserts a random delay before running. Do this is you're running the script from crontab to make it look more like a human.

-i

Ignore Duplicates. If the -i flag is passed, comment_myspace will not check the profile page for duplciate comments, it will just post.

-r

Reset the exclusions file. comment_myspace remembers who it has commented before and won't comment them again. Using the -r flag resets this list (maybe I should call it -f for "forget?" :) Use this if you want to post a new comment to people and you don't care if you've commented them before. Note that unless you use the -i flag also, comment_myspace will still skip profiles on which it sees your profile link already.

The reset is done -before- commenting begins.

-n max_count

Only post max_count comments. This defaults to 50 in WWW::Myspace::Comment as of this writing. Setting a value here will pass it to the WWW::Myspace::Comment object. This is mostly useful for posting fewer than 50 comments at a time, since Myspace won't let you post more than that without giving you a CAPTCHA.

-u username

Use "username" as the username when logging in

-p password

Use this password to log in (must be provided if -u is used

friendID

Post to this (or these) friendIDs only

-c cache_file

Use "cache_file" as the file to store/read the list of friends we've commented. As comments are left, the status of the post will be written to this file. If you don't provide this, the default cache_file will be used. See WWW::Myspace::Comment for details.

Examples

Post to only two friends (will prompt for username
and password):
comment -m 'Merry Christmas\!\!\!' 370234 275034

Post "Happy New Year!!!" to all our friends (will prompt for username
and password):
comment -m 'Happy New Year\!\!\!'

Post to all Joe's friends using "joe@somewhere.com"'s account:
comment -m 'Just saying hi' -u joe@somewhere.com -p FooBar92

Known Issues / To Do

CAPTCHA: MySpace.com allows 53 or 55 posts before requiring a CATCHA response, then allows 3 before requiring it agian. Not sure what the timeout is on this (12 hours?).

Note that the evolving point of leaving comments is to make sure that we're linked to from as many pages as possible, and mentioned on as many pages as possible. We want to appear to "be everywhere". Since we can only post to about 50 pages a day, we maximize our exposure by checking each page we're going to post on to see if we're already there and skipping it if we are.

To Do:

- Provide a CGI interface so band members can coordinate and type in the
  CAPTCHA code. Interface would act as a relay: for each person we'd
  auto-post to, display the filled in comment form and have them customize
  it and/or fill in the captcha code. Could run in semi-automatic mode
  where it'd only display the page for them if it got a code request.