TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API – Intridea Development Blog

Twitter’s Streaming API is one of the most exciting developments in the Twitter API in some time. It gives you the ability to create a long-standing connection to Twitter that receives “push” updates when new tweets matching certain criteria arrive, obviating the need to constantly poll for updates. TweetStream is a Ruby library to access the new API.
(Link: TweetStream: Ruby Access to the Twitter Streaming API – Intridea Development Blog)