The error was “Connection Refused” with this response: TwitterException{exceptionCode=[b5e7486f-24943238 b5e7486f-2494320e], statusCode=-1, retryAfter=-1, rateLimitStatus=null, featureSpecificRateLimitStatus=null, version=2.2.4}

I found out that Twitter has turned on only accepting SSL connections for connecting to [...]]]> This morning my Twitter data collection program suddenly started failing to connect. I’m using the the excellent twitter4j library for connecting to Twitter.

The error was “Connection Refused” with this response:

TwitterException{exceptionCode=[b5e7486f-24943238 b5e7486f-2494320e], statusCode=-1, retryAfter=-1, rateLimitStatus=null, featureSpecificRateLimitStatus=null, version=2.2.4}


I found out that Twitter has turned on only accepting SSL connections for connecting to streams today. (https://dev.twitter.com/blog/streaming-api-turning-ssl-only-september-29th)

I tried setting builder.setUseSSL(true) in Twitter4j, but that didn’t fix the problem. There is a new snapshot build of twitter4j that does fix it (2.2.5-SNAPSHOT). It is available for download from http://twitter4j.org.

I’m using Eclipse Helios and Maven and had some trouble working out how to get the SNAPSHOT. In the configuration I have, it picked up the snapshot of twitter4j-stream-2.2.5-SNAPSHOT.jar, but not the twitter4j-core-2.2.5-SNAPSHOT.jar. I tried a few different things to make it get the core snapshot which didn’t work, but then found that disabling the releases in the repository definition worked:

   <repository>
      <id>twitter4j.org</id>
      <name>twitter4j.org Repository</name>
      <url>http://twitter4j.org/maven2</url>
      <releases>
         <enabled>false</enabled>
      </releases>
      <snapshots>
         <enabled>true</enabled>
      </snapshots>
   </repository>

Not sure why the twitter4j-stream snapshot was downloaded but not the twitter4j-core without changing the POM. But with this change, my data collection is working again although I’ve missed a few hours of data.

We are in the process building a system – using both established and novel open source intelligence methods – to gauge, assess and display changes in the online discussion of [...]]]> Will Grant and I have written an article on the Diffusion blog titled “An Atlas of Now” describing the project I’m working on at CPAS.

We are in the process building a system – using both established and novel open source intelligence methods – to gauge, assess and display changes in the online discussion of science and technology issues, controversies and dangerous alternate conceptions. Our goal is to develop a science communication ‘atlas of now’: revealing geographical and temporal changes in attitudes to science and technology issues throughout society.  
(An Atlas of Now)

We will be presenting a paper on this project at the Australian Science Communicators National Conference February 2010.