This is the story of nodeStorage.
In April last year I decided it was time for me to get my Twitter act together in my new JavaScript-based work environment. Back when I was working primarily in Frontier, and before the great breakup with Twitter and app developers, I had a pretty easy Twitter programming interface. I wanted the same thing for apps written in JavaScript in the browser.
It took a total of about two months from beginning to end to get it all working and to get a few apps built on top of it to prove that I had a complete interface.
Then I got interested in Facebook, and realized I'd have to do the same thing for it, and when I started I figured it would take about two months, the same amount of time I had spent on Twitter. Nope. It took two days. That's because Facebook had written a special library for browser-based JavaScript apps that hides all the details of connecting with Facebook from the browser.
This has value
At that point I realized that what I had in my glue for Twitter had value on its own. There was no other Node.js package that was as complete or easy. So I spent some time cleaning it up and adding S3-based storage (all apps need storage), and last month I released it as MIT-licensed open source.
That's nodeStorage.
Why it's a big deal
It makes Twitter as easy to program in browser-based JavaScript as Facebook.
It adds storage, which even Facebook doesn't offer.
It takes the Twitter API, which was significantly less easy than Facebook's and gives it parity, and adds an essential feature, making app development on top of the Twitter API incredibly easy and most important complete for app-building.
Now, I understand some people feel burned by Twitter, and don't want to risk building on its API, but nodeStorage takes a lot of the risk out of it. And I don't think today's Twitter is as concerned about app developers as the earlier version was.
Anyway, that's the story! If you're looking for an easy way to get started with the Twitter API and you can deploy a Node.js app, then nodeStorage is probably what you're looking for.