UNIX and Linux Applications

Hey everyone,


First, I'm not sure whether I should have posted this thread under the basic Unix commands forum or not, so I apologize if this was not the best place to do so...


Then, as the title of this discussion suggests, I would like to stream specific tweets for research purposes (I am a PhD student (interested in linguistics, not computing... -.-')), and I first started learning a few basic things with Python, but I realized that it could (apparently) be possible with just the Terminal (I'm on Mac OS) and a program like Twurl (if I'm not mistaken), so I gave up Python, but thus far I have just been able to connect to Twitter via the command line, by using my API key and secret, but now I'm stuck and I can't figure out how to make requests to stream specific tweets according to key words, or geo-localization.
I have been spending the last three weeks learning the basics of the command line so that I can better understand how it works, but I still can't find a relatively recent tutorial which would be clear enough and basic enough for a complete newbie in computing to understand how to do that, so I desperately need help now, since I am working on streaming tweets for a research project, and the deadlines are now becoming more and more pressing... So my questions are:


1) I can connect to Twitter with the Terminal and Twurl by using my API key and secret, what is the next step?
2) How to make requests to extract tweets from specific cities and with specific key words?
3) How to start streaming?


Please try to be clear (at least in newbies' terms...) since all the topics I found on the Internet apparently assume a certain knowledge of programming basics, which I don't have and it is quite frustrating not to be able to understand why the commands don't work, or what to do to make it work, hence my need for clear explanations...


I thank you in advance for any help you may bring! Any advice would be invaluable at this point. Don't hesitate to tell me if you need any more info.


Best

2) is a twitter question, but you could reverse engineer how by examining twitter pages that submit tweets. Generally it turns into an HTTP POST of some sort (GET is used for inquiry, POST for data entry). POSTing form data usually means encoding it into the data stream.
3) When your browser receives a twitter stream, it is driven by a script within the page, which can make new inquiries periodically to update the presentation. Reverse engineer those scripts.

Maybe there are friendlier Twitter APIs or tools you could use. twitter APIs OR tools - Google Search

Thanks for the reply DGPickett, I was about to answer it myself actually, because I just found out how to do that myself, yay!!! ; )

So, for people who may be as incompetent in programming as me and to save them some time, the command you have to enter in the Terminal in order to start streaming tweets with specific key words is:

$ twurl -t -d track=keyword -H stream.twitter.com /1.1/statuses/filter.json

Of course you have to replace "keyword" by the word you wish to extract!

Now I'm working on adding a "locations" request to a "track" (which you use to extract certain keywords from tweets) request, so that I could extract tweets with specific key words from specific locations, but I can't figure out how for the moment, so anyone with a tip would be welcome!!!

Thanks again DGPickett, I appreciate the help!