Twitter latest tweet Q's

[Jahova]

I've been using the following PHP code (not made by me) to display my latest twitter tweets on my site. I got two questions for you guys about the code today;

1. Is there a better and easier way to code the same thing, still in PHP
2. If twitter is offline, the script will stop the rest of my page from loading. Is there a way to make the rest of my page continue loading if twitter is offline, and show a message to say twitter is offline.

            <?php
            function getTweet($url) {
            $feed = file_get_contents($url);
            $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($feed);
            $tweet = $xml->entry->title;
            return $tweet;
            }
            
            $username = "TomSpit";
            $url = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:".$username."&rpp=1";
            
            echo "<a href=\"http://twitter.com/tomspit/\" onclick=\"window.open(this); return false;\">";
            echo getTweet($url);
            echo "</a>";
            ?>

All help receives a +REP. Tom.

[Shibby-Shabs]

Sure is http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets go to "my website" then just do plain HTML or choose a design.

[Dentafrice]

<?php
$username = "dentafrice";

$url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/{$username}.xml?count=1";
$get = @file_get_contents($url);

if($get) {
    // did load the page..
    $status = new SimpleXMLElement($get);
    echo $status->status[0]->text;
}